The Game Needed Me

Come visit at Groudswell Games

2009-05-30T19:24:00.003-04:00

Thanks for visiting The Game Needed Me. In an effort to formalize my game development efforts and to promote my first iPhone game, I have created a new site and a new blog, Groundswell Games. All the old posts from this blog have been imported to the new site, so all you need to do is update your RSS feed or bookmark.

I will be attempting to redirect this blog as well as possible, so I hope the transition to Groundswell Games will be easy for you.

Thanks for reading, and let me know how you like the new site!

A personal note

2009-02-19T19:28:00.008-05:00

Here at TGNM we're pretty much all business; this is a game development blog, after all. Today is different, however. You see, my wife is pregnant with our first baby, and we found out this morning that we're having a little boy. It's hard to describe how I feel today, probably because there's not a single word that would do it -- excited, scared, nervous, happy, awestruck. None of them quite work.

Things are certainly going to change for us, and soon, but rather than dwell on all of that, I'd like to take a moment to admire the first picture of my firstborn son.

The doctor says that's his spine. You can see it ... right?

Zen and the art of indie game design

2009-02-12T21:03:00.005-05:00

Touch Arcade posted an article yesterday about the upcoming iPhone game Zen Bound. Besides looking pretty frickin' slick, Zen Bound is notable because it's aiming at the increasingly popular zen-influenced approach to indie gaming (There is no spoon).

I put this in the same category as other non-traditional games like Jenova Chen's Cloud and flOw, and, to some extent, Crayon Physics (though it's more of a traditional puzzle game). These games are all characterized by a deliberate attempt to avoid the traditional trappings of commercial video games (or even the general concept of gaming). They aren't violent or particularly goal-driven, and they don't present situations where winning something is the player's primary motivation.

Games like this are appealing to me from a design perspective because of their counter-cultural tendencies. What's the best way to create an interactive experience that explores more than the adrenaline rush of today's big-budget games? Make something that moves slowly and doesn't go anywhere. It's a distinctly indie thought process, and it works perfectly for small projects. The focus is on quality on a small scale, doing one thing well and for its own sake.

I don't know if any of these designers will ever strike it rich, but that's probably not the point. The point, I suppose, is that there is no point.

Real estate in Fable 2: an incentive not to play

2009-02-08T14:00:00.009-05:00

I've been playing Fable 2 since late December, hoping that it would deliver on all the hype. After putting in quite a few hours and completing the main story line, I've decided that, like a lot of critics, I'm not quite convinced. Certainly there are impressive elements -- the graphics and visual style are suitably impressive, and the combat system manages to be simple, fun, and relatively deep.

However, as plenty of critics have said, the story is way too short, and ends abruptly without so much as a boss fight. The clothing system is pretty fun to play with, but there is an unfortunate lack of options for outfitting your character, and the only equipment that affects your performance is weaponry (which is also lacking variety).

Aside from all these issues, the one that sticks with me the most is the poorly balanced real estate system. On the surface, it's a neat system. You can buy property and rent it out to earn money. You can purchase furniture to improve the value of your properties and sell them for a profit. You can interact with the local economy to improve (or destroy) the amount of profit you get from your businesses. You collect rent every five minutes of real time, even when you're not playing.

As nice as it is to earn money when you aren't playing, the real estate system actually creates an incentive not to play once you get further into the game. After finishing the main story, you gain the ability to purchase Fairfax Castle for 1,000,000 gold. I didn't have close to that amount, so my strategy was to buy up as much valuable real estate as possible and then stop playing for a week until my bank account got fat enough. There wasn't enough content to keep me occupied in Albion until I had enough money, so I just switched to a different game. Call me crazy, but shouldn't game mechanics actually encourage people to play?

To make matters worse, now that I have more money than I can spend, there's no reward that seems worth the trouble. Apparently the reward for collecting all 50 silver keys, aside from an Xbox achievement is 50,000 gold? Seriously? After spending a million on a piece of property? Why would I spend hours collecting keys for chump change like that?

As much as I complain about Fable 2, my wife and my brother (who get the brunt of my complaints) would be quick to point out that I'm still playing. I can't really explain why, except maybe for my compulsion to collect obscure achievements.

Beyond the numbers: are they just for über-nerds?

2009-01-28T20:40:00.009-05:00

Hit points, experience points, reputation points, strength, critical hit percentage, intelligence, agility... There's a long list of "stats" common to games today (RPGs in particular), and most of the time the numbers behind these stats are visible to the player. So do players really want to calculate their crit percentages and crunch the benefits of +12 stamina vs. +10 intelligence? Is it enough for NPCs to express their feelings toward you as +5 love, +7 attraction, and -30 fear?

Asked another way, is it possible to derive any real drama from all the rigid computer logic behind our favorite games? Earnest Adams gives his thoughts in a recent Gamasutra feature about "Numbers, Emotions, and Behavior."

Adams' argument is a familiar one: video games will never rise to their full potential as long as designers continue to focus more attention on the numerical mechanics behind a game than the human element of the game's characters.

In principle, I agree. Games do need characters that behave in more believably human ways. We as gamers would all be better for it, and the industry would get more respect. The constant focus on math isn't a very "humanistic" thing; it feels more mechanical.

The difficulty, though, is that video games aren't just about characters and stories -- they're called games for a reason. We play them. They have rules and structure. We engage in goal-oriented activities and try to win more often than lose. In a fundamental sense, games are mechanical. If you take these elements away from an interactive experience, it no longer qualifies as a game.

Adams notes in his article that "all that emphasis on gear [in RPG games] seems distinctly nerdy." He's talking here about the desire to collect the best items that provide the best stat bonuses and give you the best chance at beating your opponent(s). Is this nerdy? Maybe, but this behavior isn't the exclusive domain of hardcore gamers. Fantasy sports requires the same type of in-depth attention and number crunching, and no one calls it nerdy.

Perhaps the difference is that fantasy sports don't offer the potential for narrative the way video games do. It's pure gaming with no delusions of artistic grandeur.

So what's a game designer to do? Hide the numbers at all costs or give your hardcore players something to sink their teeth into? The answer to this quandary, like most good quandaries, is likely somewhere in the middle, and it definitely depends on the type of game you're trying to make. Could World of Warcraft benefit from more compelling dramatic action or characterization? Absolutely. But would it be so ridiculously popular if it wasn't possible to agonize over item stats and DPS? No way.

Left 4 Dead: A co-op experiment

2009-01-08T19:31:00.005-05:00

One thing my gamer friends (ok, that's all of them) and I always talk about is coordinating our purchase of a game so we can play together. Things rarely work out that way, mainly since everyone but me is still playing World of Warcraft. But last week three of us arranged to pick up Left 4 Dead at the same time. We even carpooled to the store.

After a few play sessions with everything from one to four players, here are some initial thoughts:

The co-op basket
Left 4 Dead is similar to Portal in one very important way. No, not that it's made by Valve. At it's core, Left 4 Dead is an experiment in one gameplay mechanic. Just like Portal took the concept of the portal gun and explored it to its utmost potential, Left 4 Dead attempts the same feat with multiplayer co-op. Zombie games are nothing new. Co-op isn't either. But Left 4 Dead is designed to force teamwork in co-op, which, strangely, hasn't been done too often.

From this angle, Left 4 Dead is a smashing success. Co-op play is great fun. It's intense, fast-paced, requires communication, and presents a decent challenge even on the normal difficulty setting.

The problem is that the game puts all its undead eggs in this one basket. The amout of fun this game offers is directly proportional to the number of people playing. It's fantastic with four, pretty good with three, just ok with two, and borderline boring with one. Not being one to play online with strangers, I anticipate that we'll frequently run into scheduling problems. And that's too much like work.

Embrace the random
The other primary feature of Left 4 Dead is it's sophisticated AI system. Every time you play a level, it's different. The game AI decides where to place boss zombies and where zombie rushes will come from. It definitely keeps you on your toes. I imagine higher difficulty levels (which I haven't yet graduated to) are quite intense. Even music and sound effects are controlled by this system, which creates a wonderful mood just at the right times and gives perfect queues to build suspense about which monster might be around the next corner.

In fact, I think Left 4 Dead's AI system presents a big step forward in gaming. There's no more memorizing enemy locations and finding just the right way to take them out. The randomness of gameplay forces you to play the game with urgency each time through.

However (you knew it was coming), all this glorious randomness comes with a price: there's not much content. The game includes four campaigns, each of which takes about an hour to play from start to finish. They're brilliantly designed, but they're short. Actually, they're about the right length. One hour of zombie slaying is about right. There just aren't enough campaigns to choose from. It may be impossible to know where the zombies are coming from, but you can certainly learn the best locations to fight them. The first time through a campaign is exhilarating; you don't know where you're going, and you don't know from which door death might emerge.

Overall, Left 4 Dead is quite well executed. There aren't enough games these days that focus on quality over quantity. Valve has produced the last few. Nevertheless, I find myself wishing for just a little more quantity on this one. I don't know how many more coordinated play sessions we'll pull off before somebody loses interest. Once that happens, the chances of anyone else sticking around drop considerably. Just like in the zombie apocalypse, if you don't all stick together, the fun won't last long.

The bandwagon

2009-01-04T20:59:00.004-05:00

Happy new year, everyone. It's time to come back from vacation mode and get serious again. That means getting back to the day job, working more regularly on game development, and, of course, blogging. Yeah, maybe I'll get in shape, too.

One thing is certain, though: I now have more money invested in my little venture. My lovely wife bought me an iPod touch for Christmas, and signed up for the Apple iPhone developer program. Plus, I bought a Unity iPhone Basic license, so I can use the coolest development environment to make games for the coolest gadget.

Yes, that's right, I took the plunge -- just like everybody else.

This is one of those times that I wish I were more of an early adopter. The iPhone development market is pretty well flooded now, and the bulk of new apps coming along are games. Every day that goes by will make it harder to score a big hit; there's so much noise out there. Thankfully, thousands of people buy iPhones every day, and all of them no doubt will buy a few apps as they go. As the market matures, there will be less money around for silly or pointless games, and quality will become more important.

What am I working on? Well, a few things. The first goal is likely to be a simple, cheap (or free) game that lets me test the waters a bit. I'm working on something with my brother as well, which has been in the works for several months. We've started adapting our progress for the iPhone, and it's going to be a challenge to get things running smoothly. I've also got another, grander idea in mind that could be really cool, if I can get something out there before someone beats me to it. So many possibilities...

Then, of course, there's SPUDZOOKA. I fully intend to adapt it for the iPhone, but I have quite a bit of work to do there. I did a quick run today to see how well it could just be ported over. Alas, not very well. Running it promptly crashed my iPod.

There are a lot of sacrifices that have to be made for a mobile device, and I'm just beginning to get my head around them. More on that later. Stay tuned -- this is going to be an interesting year. For now, back to dabbling.

Morph targets and a disembodied head

2008-11-28T23:40:00.007-05:00

It's been a while since I posted something for you to play with.

Well, here you go.

It will take a minute to load (lots of stuff to calculate). Once it does, just play around with the sliders to customize the guy's face. You can click and drag on his face to turn him around. Cool, huh?

Unfortunately, I can't say that I whipped this up after Thanksgiving dinner. Actually I've been working on it for a week or so, trying out different methods of achieving what I wanted -- and some methods of getting nowhere close. Actually, this version is the most complex one I did. The fact that it works is reason enough to post it.

How it works
Now the thrilling explanation. One of the features that Unity lacks at the moment is the ability to handle morph targets (aka blend shapes) imported from 3D tools like Maya or Cheetah. So, the only way to implement them is to code a system by hand. After scouring the Unity forums, I found a script that would handle simple mesh morphs but didn't do anything as complex as multiple blended attributes.

Using the basics of that script, I manged to put together a system that works pretty well. Here's the basic flow of things:

To set everything up, I assign the base mesh (3D shape) in Unity, then create a list of attributes that I want to adjust. Each attribute has a reference mesh created by editing the original mesh to get the most extreme version of each facial attribute.
When the scene loads, it first stores several pieces of information (this is why it takes a while to load):
- For each attribute (24 of them in this scene), it builds a list of vertices in the mesh that are affected by that attribute.
- At the same time it builds a list of offset vectors for each vertex affected by each attribute. This information stores the maximum possible offset for each vertex per attribute. Lots of data building up here...
- Then we build a list of which attributes affect each vertex. This is the converse of the first list above, and it's necessary to keep the code running smoothly.
After all that data has been stored, the default mesh loads along with a bunch of sliders to control the various attributes.
Each time a slider is adjusted, we calculate the proper amount to adjust each vertex affected by that attribute. This is done by using a weighted average of all the attributes affecting each vertex in question. By using a weighted average, we can combine attributes like the width and height of the eyes without getting conflicts (this part took me forever to figure out).
Once we have the right offset vectors, we adjust the affected vertices by those values and redraw the mesh. Voila!

Optimization
Because there's so much manipulation of individual vertices in this code, it was really hard to optimize. I spent almost the entire day trying to get it to run at an acceptable speed, and I still don't think it's good enough. The main problem is that when a vertex (or group of vertices) is affected by multiple attributes at once, the weighted average becomes harder to figure out and requires more processing juice. I attempted to store offset values rather than recalculating the average every time a vertex is affected, but I couldn't figure it out before dinner. This version runs well enough, so it will have to do.

Oh, and happy (late) Thanksgiving!

EDIT: I posted a new version of the file after getting some serious optimization help from Jamie. It still takes a while to start up (but not as long), and it runs considerably faster once it loads. My code now also morphs the normals as well as the vertex positions, which I had overlooked before.

Untold fortunes await

2008-11-18T17:46:00.004-05:00

This is the kind of article I don't need to read. It puts crazy thoughts in my head. The article relates the stunning success of a young fellow who developed an iPhone game over the course of four months, put it on the App Store, and made $250,000 in the first two months. Now he's quit is day job, started a company and employs several people. He's living the dream.

The article does point out (a little slowly) that untold fortunes aren't exactly guaranteed. I don't have any serious notions about creating an overnight sensation--though it would be pretty cool. In fact, being the realist that I am, I can think of three big reasons why my path probably won't match his:

He designed a puzzle game. Puzzle games have very broad appeal and are great to play for five minutes at a time.
He made a game that required minimal art assets (just a few triangles that can flip over). This fact alone probably saved him months of development time.
His game was available at the launch of the App Store. This is the big one. The number of games available on the App Store has grown ridiculously fast over the last few months. The difficulty of cutting through the clutter increases with every game that gets added.

I'm not trying to say that puzzle games are easy to make. It's a space that will get crowded really fast, and few have the right addictive qualities. I'm also not that interested in making them. For some reason that will probably doom my game development career before it begins, want to make games that have some element of character and space to them.

The real point probably is that, while there's real money to be made in iPhone gaming, it's going to get harder all the time to get people's attention. But with a great idea and a lot of polish, it just might be possible to create something really special. Success might also take quite a few failures.

More clout for iPhone gaming

2008-11-13T19:03:00.005-05:00

Saw this article about the fact that several game industry heavyweights are throwing their ... weight ... behind iPhone gaming. There's one EA exec that has gotten quite a bit of press the last week or so for saying that Nintendo and Sony should be scared of the possibilities for Apple-based mobile gaming.

The fact that the iPhone isn't a dedicated gaming device doesn't seem to be a problem for these folks -- nor should it be. In fact, the idea that you can carry one device around to occupy every odd minute of your life seems quite appealing to people.

I've been reading about some of the technical limitations of the iPhone, and it definitely seems possible to overcome them. I'm trying to think of it like a retro game development exercise. I'll just pretend I'm developing for the original Playstation or N64.

In case you're wondering, I'm not actively developing for the iPhone, yet. I'm hoping in the next couple of months I'll be up and running. My brother and I are working on a game right now that we're planning to port over, and I have another idea for a game that could be really cool, if I can pull it off. SPUDZOOKA is on the list, too. It might be a good one to practice on, since the game is pretty much done. I would want to add some new levels, though (how long have I been saying that?).

A confession of loyalty betrayed

2008-11-10T19:16:00.007-05:00

I have always been an Apple fan. (That's not the confession.)

It wasn't long ago that such a statement would cause listeners' eyes to roll uncontrollably. Often this reflex was accompanied by a sharp exhale of breath that most people would mistake for an impatient sigh laced with sarcasm. Lifelong Apple fans like myself, however, have always been able to recognize the true emotion behind those reactions: jealousy.

Don't bother to deny it -- denial is just part of the friendly game we all play. It's ok; I understand. Now that Apple's cool and Microsoft isn't, I do like saying that I knew that from the beginning, and I told you so, and Mac OS 6 beats Windows 3.1 any day.

All these things are self-evident, and my gloating undoubtedly suits a Mac user admirably. Nevertheless, there is one little problem: I love my Xbox 360.

Maybe it's the allure of hi-def gaming. Or the number of games that appeal to my taste more than the PS3. Or maybe it's the promise of a true all-in-one media center in my living room (not that I've downloaded any TV shows or movies through Xbox Live, yet).

I don't know the reason, but I find, strangely, that I'm excited by the impending arrival of the New Xbox Experience on Nov. 19. Not just a little excited, either -- I'm excited like Steve Jobs is giving a keynote at WWDC. How did this happen?

But there are plenty of things to be excited about, right? I will be able to:

Create a Wii-worthy avatar to replace my stupid gamer picture
Navigate through thousands of downloadable goodies much faster
Stream Netflix movies straight to my TV
Some of the Netflix movies are even hi-def

Sure, mostly I'll just be playing games like I always did, but there's something about the new wrapper that has me giddy as a schoolboy. The Netflix streaming itself is pretty awesome, so maybe that's the reason. Netflix is way cooler than Microsoft anyway.

If anybody's interested, here's a review of the New Xbox Experience from Ars Technica.

Lament of an anti-social gamer

2008-11-05T18:41:00.004-05:00

There was a primer posted on Gamasutra a couple of weeks ago about the growing role of social communities in games (and the challenges of building one that works). It's probably obvious by now that there are huge advantages to building an online social community around games -- give your players a place to compare notes and shoot the breeze with other players, and you've got an almost surefire hit, particularly if the game already has a fanbase. Even games that are entirely played online anyway (say, World of Warcraft) have thriving internet communities because they give players another reason engage with each other while they should be working.

But is it possible to provide too many social options for players? It's a lot of work to set up such things, and there may be a point at which actual gameplay can be sacrificed for the sake of "social" features. The case in point is Spore. I was pumped about Spore before it came out. I bought it within a week after release. It's a great game, and it's revolutionary in several ways, but when you really dig into it, there's not much game there.

The Spore experience is so focused on encouraging players to share their creations with each other that I felt from the beginning as if I were missing half the game because I didn't care about looking at other people's creations. I love that other creations are pulled into my universe automatically, but I haven't spent a single minute looking at sporepedia online or making friends in the online Spore community.

(Full disclosure time: I'm not a heavy user of social media. I get it, and I think it's changing the nature of the internet before our eyes. But I lead quite an anti-social online life.)

It's becoming accepted generally that, if you don't build social features into your game, you better do it online. In fact, one of the suggestions I've heard for indie developers is to focus lots of attention on your online social presence. Make your game about connecting, not just playing, say the experts. They're probably right--all my favorite and most enduring entertainment experiences have thriving communities. My lack of participation doesn't mean it isn't there.

What I'm trying to find, being an ultra-indie, is the right balance. I can't build or support a big-time social platform to supplement my games. Even if I could, it would almost certainly seem incongruous with the scope of the games themselves. Nor can I hope to compete with the big casual game sites (which naturally have full-featured social elements).

Probably, as with most things, the answer is somewhere in the middle. Create a game with in-game social elements (like multiplayer) and then give players a simple way to connect with each other outside the game using existing platforms like Facebook apps or embeddable web site widgets. Guess I'll add those to the list of things to learn.

Puerto Rico and The Fountainhead

2008-10-30T19:14:00.006-04:00

My wife and I got back from Puerto Rico a few days ago. It was a fun trip, very relaxing, and much needed. Basically the only thing I did while in the Caribbean was sit by the pool and read (with some eating, drinking, and snorkeling thrown in).

In my pre-trip search for a book to read, I stumbled on an old copy of The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand that I got from my father several years ago. It's hard to say what drew me to it, not knowing much about Rand or her books, except that I had never read it, and everybody says it's a classic. I'll forego a full review, but I will say that it started out really well, with interesting, complex, and often surprising characters. Unfortunately the story quickly took a back seat to a lot of preaching about the eternal struggle between society and the individual.

Any Ayn Rand critics who happen to be reading this, don't worry. I haven't turned into a raging Objectivist. Nevertheless, Rand's perspective (it's not hard to make a connection between the author's ideas and those of Howard Roark, the protagonist) did strike a chord with me. The notion of the self as humankind's quintessential trait and most valuable asset is hard to refute -- self-awareness being what separates us from the the animals, etc. But more than that, her portrayal of mass media and its influence on unthinking hordes of people was eerily reminiscent of today's reality TV culture.

The Banner (a newspaper in the book) used sex, violence, and gossip the same way CSI uses the shiny object effect ("it's...so...pretty") to draw millions of viewers, and ridiculous editorials in the book's fictional newspaper affected public opinion like today's 24-hour news stations, both of which spew nonsense because they know people just want to be told what to think. There's even a character who bears a healthy resemblance to Jerry Bruckheimer or Rupert Murdoch -- a media mogul who made his fortune by appealing to the lowest common denominator.

So what does any of this have to do with game development? Directly, nothing. But it's easy to make the same arguments about the money-grubbing and lack of originality in the video game industry as Rand made about architecture in The Fountainhead. Ultimately, I wonder if there's anything truly original to be gained from big studios whose collective goal is to rehash past success as quickly as possible. Rand places all her hope in lone, single-minded, and frequently outcast geniuses (Copernicus, Galileo, DaVinci) to move the human race toward a greater future.

Will some indie game developer take the industry in a whole new direction? With the ballooning budgets and shrinking quality of most games today (and art in general), it seems the indie scene is the only place left to look.

iPhone development tips

2008-10-09T20:14:00.003-04:00

As a follow-up to my last post, Game Career Guide just published an article on iPhone game development tips. there's some good info there, particularly about the general immaturity of the market and some of challenges for designing control schemes for the iPhone. The accelerometer, in particular, is one of the phones most unique features and also, I'd guess, one of the trickiest things to use effectively.

The article also warns against using the touch screen to simulate directional pads or joysticks, since there's no force feedback to tell you when you've slipped off the controls.

I'm still not sold on the idea of iPhone game development, but I have to say it's looking more interesting every day.

The future of gaming on the iPhone?

2008-10-07T19:10:00.004-04:00

Unity Technologies announced last week the details of their iPhone development license for Unity. I've been waiting for this since they first said it was coming, and the specifics are about what I expected:

The iPhone development license is an add-on to an existing Unity license.
There are two versions of the license -- one that clearly targets indies and one for larger studios. The indie version is significantly less expensive, but it comes with some limitations, including a mandatory Unity splash screen as the game loads.
There is no limit on the number of games you can create with a license (as opposed to the Wii development license for Unity, which has a per-title fee).

With iPhones selling like hotcakes and the complete distribution channel Apple has set up with the App Store, it's quite tempting to get myself a basic license and start work porting SPUDZOOKA.

I can't help but wonder, though, how much of a future the iPhone has as a gaming platform. Certainly it's a great device. The accelerometer and multi-touch display make it perfect for simple, addictive games. But how much is just a novelty? Will every new iPhone owner buy a couple of games because they can and then play them for a grand total of five minutes? Everyone I know that owns an iPhone is constantly messing with it, sending texts or looking things up on YouTube. But when do they play games? During the morning commute? On planes? Though where does any adult play mobile games?

Still (can you tell I'm undecided?), the cost of entry is pretty low -- just a few hundred dollars, which, if you consider it the cost of starting a small business, is unbelievably small with very little risk. And, considering that Unity is perfect for developing games quickly, you can't really go wrong.

For a small team with limited resources, there are remarkably few reasons not to develop games for the iPhone. But the one that makes me hesitate is a big one: in another year, will anyone still be buying games for their phone? What do you think?

A whole new look

2008-10-01T19:48:00.002-04:00

Hi folks. Believe it or not, I'm still here. In case you didn't notice, I updated the look of the blog. I'm going to be making some more changes soon; this is just a starting point. Among the changes: blogging more often. I have no excuse but laziness for my long lapses lately. Things have certainly been busy, and you'll be happy to know I haven't just been sitting around. Anyway, I hope you like the new look. Stay tuned for more.

IdentiFiction: Can it deliver?

2008-08-12T18:43:00.002-04:00

I stumbled today on a new project called IdentiFiction, an upcoming online channel for episodic, browser-based games. After checking out the site, I definitely agree with the Rampant Coyote's assessment. IdentiFiction's vision is totally in line with the direction I want games to go: complex characters and stories presented in a way that will appeal to more than our most juvenile instincts.

The weekly episodic format is also appealing to me, since it's something that makes increasing sense as people get used to paying small fees for downloaded television episodes. It's also a great way to tell intricate stories without requiring hardcore time committments.

The question, of course, is whether this team of 50 people can deliver something compelling with their first game, Aosphere. The odds are against them, but maybe that's part of the appeal. In any case, I've marked my calendar for October 15th.

Unity 2.1!

2008-07-29T19:13:00.003-04:00

Ok, this news is pretty stale at this point, but it's worth posting anyway. Unity Technologies released Unity 2.1 on Friday. This update was a long time coming (about nine months I think), but it's a doosy. The message around this update is that it finally makes Unity MMO-enabled. How? Well...

Endless streaming terrains. Yes, that's right, Unity now supports as large a world as you want to create. You can build multiple terrain tiles and stream them in to create truly massive worlds. Anyone following TGNM the last month or so knows I've been working toward a home-grown version of the same thing. I had a feeling the Unity folks would throw something like this, but I couldn't be happier. Ok, I could be happier: I haven't figured out how to make these nifty new features work yet. The documentation is noticeably lacking so far.
More realistic terrain lighting. Terrains in Unity 2.0 would only work with directional lights and lightmaps, which severely limited things. You couldn't, for example, light a road with torches in any realistic way. Terrains also now work with projectors, which means better shadow effects (for poor indie owners like me--terrains support real-time shadows for pro licenses) and the possibility for projected spell effects or selectors.
Procedural control over characters and animation. Unity always had a really flexible animation scripting system, but now it's possible to create even more advanced effects like on-the-fly creation of skinned meshes. This stuff is pretty advanced, but it seems to open the door for really flexible MMO-style character creation. You can also sync scripted events with animations, making it easy to spawn things like footprints, footfall sounds, impact effects, etc.
Streaming assets. This feature, alas, is reserved for pro licenses, but you can now pack up any group of assets in Unity into a bundle and stream it in as the player approaches.

All in all it's a pretty amazing release. There are still plenty of things huge things that would be required to build an MMO with Unity, like all the back-end databases and server configurations, but this is a major step.

Sure, I suppose I could feel annoyed that I spent so much time doing things the hard way with terrain, but who am I kidding? I always do things the hard way.

SPUDZOOKA updates

2008-07-26T14:49:00.003-04:00

In a few free moments the other day I implemented some much-needed improvements to SPUDZOOKA. There aren't any new levels yet, but I did make some changes several people had requested:

I made the second level easier. It's a sign that you didn't do enough testing when people repeatedly tell you they can't get past the second level. Mostly it was people who don't play games very often, but in a casual game they're the ones to accommodate.
I added a counter that tracks how many targets you've hit and how many are required to beat the level. This helps people track their progress and gives a better sense of how urgent things are as time ticks away.
I fixed a bug where the money you earned at the end of the last level wasn't being added to your total. This meant you couldn't buy anymore cannon parts after playing through once.
I also added some bonus money to your total when you beat the final level. Now when you enter free play you should have enough money to buy any remaining components and customize your cannon any way you like.

So if you're a SPUDZOOKA fan but haven't played in a while, go back and check out the new enhancements!

Seamless tiling terrain, in pieces

2008-07-23T20:15:00.006-04:00

I've still been working away on several things since my last post, but most of the sweat has gone into correcting a few issues with the looping terrain I linked a couple weeks ago. I'm happy to report that I've finally fixed the two things that were driving me crazy:

Published versions of the file were strangely not rendering the main instance of the terrain from certain angles. Something about it was not working nicely with the camera. I never figured out why the problem was happening, but I did manage to work around it.
It was painfully obvious where the seams were between tiles. The cause for this was pretty obvious as well: While the vertices lined up perfectly on the edges of the terrain tile, the normals did not, which made light react differently to two vertices located in the same place along the edges. Unfortunately it took way too long to fix the problem. In the end, very little code was involved (which is not to say that I didn't write a lot of unnecessary code along the way), but I used quite a bit of scratch paper trying to figure out how to access normals on the mesh's borders.

Anyway, check out the new, improved version.

But wait, there's more! I also developed a system to generate floor tiles around you as you walk. This means you could walk forever in any direction, and there will always be something to walk on. By itself this isn't terribly interesting, as you can see. Still, the possibilities are pretty cool. If I could generate random terrains a little more quickly, I could generate a truly endless, randomly generated terrain.

Or, even better, I could create any number of seamless terrain meshes and load them in as necessary around the player a la World of Warcraft. I would just need to store a master grid of terrain tiles and keep track of the player's location. I'm still a few steps away from there, but it's starting to look doable. Pretty cool, huh?

Notes from the abyss

2008-07-02T19:39:00.005-04:00

Absentee bloggers are no fun. They entice you with a stream of regular posts and then disappear for weeks at a time, offering not a peep. When they do return it's just to supply excuses about a busy schedule or an obsession with the latest big game or to post frivolous items like creatures of the week.

Well, I'll not become an absentee (denial is an ugly thing). I have no excuses. But, for those few loyal readers who still stop by from time to time, here's a little update on my activities.

In short, I've been scattered, lacking focus. When I started writing this blog, I was working steadily on a single, massive, impractical project. Then I decided to turn my attention to SPUDZOOKA, and still I was focused. After releasing SPUDZOOKA, though, I haven't been able to settle on anything. I still work on things, a little here, a little there. But three things have primarily held my attention the last few months:

A new game. No specifics yet, but I've been working on a concept for a new game quite a bit different than SPUDZOOKA, one that will focus more on story and character and, I hope, have a wider appeal (not that potato cannons aren't universally entertaining). The difficulty so far is that story and character are tricky to develop and, while I think the concept and setting are good, I haven't been able to find the game in it. People might explore for a while, but what would compel them through the story?
A web site concept. I had an idea for a web site recently that I've been exploring, which means reading a lot about databases, php, and xml, and then tinkering with them to see if I've got the programming chops to make this idea happen.
Procedural terrain generation. Huh? I don't know where this stuff comes from, but I got it in my head that I would try to see if I could generate an application in Unity that would dynamically generate and display an endless terrain. The usefulness of something like that is maybe a little suspect, but it could spin off into some interesting applications. Unity's terrain system is a little limited right now, for example, so something like this could help people generate more realistic terrains and link them together to create truly massive worlds. Even just linking sections of terrain terrain together is something that could be useful right off the bat, particularly in, I don't know, an RPG. I hit a few tricky parts, but I did manage to create a randomly generated terrain that loops forever. Check it out (it may take a few seconds to compute).

So, I've been working, just not on a single project. Once I settle, I'm sure regular posting will resume. For now, don't forget to check back for the next creature of the week.

Edit: I fixed the bug that people were seeing in the web player and put a new file at the same location.

Creature of the week: Quanazillicus

2008-06-24T21:53:00.004-04:00

The Quanazillicus prefers to go by Quana, for short.

Spore Creature Creator is here

2008-06-17T20:15:00.009-04:00

I've been surprised the last couple of days just how excited I was about the Spore Creature Creator (released today). So I downloaded it the minute I got home from work, and I've been playing with it for hours. As expected, it's tons of fun. A stripped down version is available for free (you should definitely check it out), and you can get the full version, complete with hundreds of creature parts, for $9.99.

Unfortunately, the full version for Mac won't be available until tomorrow. Not sure why the delay, but I suppose I can handle it. If you're interested in how it works, there are thousands of videos and tutorials on YouTube (the creator allows you to post videos of your creations).

I'll avoid elaborating further (you can read a good overview here) and simply tell you again to go download at least the free version. All your creations can be made available to populate other players' universes when the full game comes out in September. For inspiration, check out a few of the creatures I've made today.

3D without (extra) headgear

2008-06-12T19:46:00.005-04:00

Not much on the game development front to report today. I've been doing some modeling in preparation for my next project (or at least a pilot test of some concepts). Progress is slow so far. Even with a decent shortcut for character modeling, there's still a lot to learn. The hardest part has been keeping the model simple and clean so it doesn't have too many polygons and will deform properly once it gets into the game. Character design is quite tricky.

Regarding the title of this post, I saw an article this morning about a new television technology that can simulate 3D video without goggles. It basically sends two signals to the screen for every frame -- one contains the image itself, and the other contains a grayscale version of the image, which conveys the depth information. The grayscale image is used by a thin layer of...something...laid over the screen that tricks the eye into seeing depth where there isn't any. That's right, no 3D headgear required (except the round ones you've already got).

In addition to sounding quite cool, it struck me that this technology is reminiscent of bump mapping in games, which uses a similar grayscale image to trick your eye into thinking there's more detail on an object than there really is.

I think there's some amazing stuff coming in the next few years in computer interaction (multi-touch technology) and entertainment technology. It's hard to imagine the kinds of games we'll be playing in another five years, or on what kind of screen.

Generation Y and low-poly 3D models

2008-06-04T19:36:00.005-04:00

I read an article in the newspaper (yes, they still have those) on Tuesday that talked about the nature of people in my generation (Generation Y, whatever that means). We are self-centered, confident, and hell-bent on instant gratification. We also want respect in the workplace now, or else. These insights are news to me, of course. Whatever leverage my peers are using to threaten their employers was clearly not shared with this humble peon.

Aside from the fact that we aren't very nice, m-m-m-my generation is also, according to the much nicer folks who decide these things, quite tech-savvy. We were raised using the internet and have all embraced Satan's favorite crime: file sharing. In effect, we think everything should be free.

Now, for the record, I don't think everything should be free. I frequently purchase music from iTunes, I am a long-time subscriber to Netflix, and I will gladly pay $.99 for a Frosty. But YouTube, Google Analytics, and the open-source software movement have taught me that while quality usually costs, it doesn't always have to.

No, the internet is home to an amazing array of kind-hearted people who build web sites offering free stuff to download (if you can wade through all the ads). Ok, most of it is crap, but a diligent search for just about anything will generally yield a site or two offering the real deal.

It was this thought process that convinced me to search for a site offering free, low-polygon 3D models to help me test a concept for my latest project. (Before you chastise me for cutting corners, let me remind you that I am a one-man shop.) You can imagine my surprise when the search yielded nothing of use. There are plenty of good sites selling 3D models, and there are plenty of horrible sites offering free models, but I found few good sites with free models, and, even worse, I didn't find any sites at all with a dedicated library of free, low-poly models.

You might argue that the niche for aspiring game developers with no money is too small to warrant such a site, and you might be right; however, consider the number of low-cost (or free) game-development platforms on the market, the hordes of young computer programmers, and Microsoft's XNA Creators Club.

It seems more likely to me that the limiting factor is the number of skilled modelers around. Most are probably employed (and sick of modeling by the time they get home), disinclined to post their work for free, or not that interested in low-poly work.

Regardless of the reason, the results of my search make me sad. Partly I'm sad that I couldn't find any models to use, but really I'm just disappointed that my instant gratification will have to wait.

A shortcut for modeling people

2008-05-28T19:04:00.006-04:00

As a way to settle on my next project, I decided to do some character prototyping. It's something I haven't done in a while, and it seemed like a good time to try a more in-depth 3D modeling project.

The human form is, as you might imagine, a fairly complex thing to model. It's easier with a solid reference drawing, but I'm not a particularly skilled artist either. So, armed with a basic line drawing enough skills to be dangerous, I set out to figure a way to cut some corners.

After some digging for a free alternative to Poser, I stumbled on a relatively new, open-source product called MakeHuman, a free piece of software designed to help people create 3D models of the human form. Turns out it's not quite complete, but I think it's going to be pretty effective for my purposes.

Upon first opening the program, though, my first thought was, Wow, that's quite an androgynous figure. This might not work at all. The model had kind of a masculine face and a vaguely female body. It turns out, though, that MakeHuman takes an interesting approach to body shape. Rather than selecting "male" or "female" when you start, you get to adjust the values along several continua, including male/female, age, muscle mass, body shape, and weight. The default model happens to lie right in the middle of the male/female spectrum.

After tweaking parameters for an hour or so, I had a character that I thought looked decent, so I exported a model to fine-tune in Cheetah. I've been working the last few days to dress it and simplify the mesh.

The only hitch so far has been that MakeHuman outputs a fairly high-resolution model with about 12,000 polygons. I ultimately want one that has four or five thousand, which should provide plenty of detail. Though Cheetah doesn't have a method for polygon reduction, Blender has a good one, so I used that first to get things down to a reasonable level. Despite the extra step, I'm hoping to end up with a decent model that doesn't require building a human form (particularly the head and face) from scratch.

It remains to be seen whether MakeHuman provides a shortcut that's actually shorter, but so far it looks like it will be a huge help in modeling.

Blender 2.46 released

2008-05-22T20:44:00.005-04:00

This news is a few days old now, but Blender 2.46 was released on Tuesday. This new version adds an impressive list of features, including:

Better hair and fur simulation
An improved particle system
Cloth simulation
Render baking for effects like normal maps
Ambient occlusion
UV texture editing

I haven't used Blender much in my game development process so far, since Cheetah provides most of the features I need in a friendlier package, but this program continues to amaze me. In my opinion, Blender is one of the true success stories of the open-source movement. It is actively developed and delivers a host of professional-quality features in a cross-platform package, for free. To buy a program with the same capabilities would cost thousands of dollars.

And, by the way, it plays nicely with Unity. Blender is definitely my app of choice for advanced 3D modeling and animation effects.

Take a look at the official Blender gallery if you want to be amazed.

New hardware

2008-05-19T21:37:00.003-04:00

Got a new computer over the weekend. I've been eyeballing the latest round of iMacs for a while, and they announced a hardware refresh a few weeks ago, so the time was right. This new one replaces my last iMac, which was nearly six years old.

The new one has a 24" monitor -- it's hard to know what to do with all the space, but game development will be a completely different experience. I see a lot less window switching in my future. I might actually be able to have the debugging console and the main Unity window open at the same time. Or maybe even have a programming window up along-side Unity. Oh, goody.

But...I don't have Unity loaded up quite yet. My license wouldn't work on the new machine for some reason (though it is supposed to), but I expect the problem will be worked out in the next day or so. That's really the last piece of the puzzle. Most of the other important software is in place and ready to go.

I'm working on a couple of concepts, trying to figure out what to develop next. Trying to find the right mix of interesting and possible. Stay tuned.

A musical interlude

2008-05-15T21:39:00.004-04:00

Tonight, a musical interlude. I traveled to Charlotte to see Radiohead last Friday. I've listened to Radiohead almost constantly since I was in college, and this was my first time seeing them perform. It was worth every penny and the long drive. They sounded great, put on a fantastic show, and played a lot of my favorite songs. Here's a video of them performing Weird Fishes/Arpeggi at the concert I attended (just ignore the drunk girls in the beginning). This is one of my favorite songs on their latest album, In Rainbows. Check it out.

Am I writing about this to bide time until I have something video game-related to say? Perhaps.

Life lessons from SPUDZOOKA

2008-05-12T21:48:00.007-04:00

I still find it difficult to call SPUDZOOKA finished. There are still so many things that would make it better. More levels, more cannon parts and paint jobs, more things to shoot at, a new environment to play in (something other than a warehouse) -- all would help. I even planned to build a level editor at one point.

But, as I've said before, SPUDZOOKA was never supposed to be more than a learning experience. What did I learn, you ask? Did any life lessons stick in my head? Here are a few:

Programming is the easy part
Yes, it's essential. Interaction (gameplay) is what makes games tick, and programming makes gameplay possible. There's no denying its importance. But I learned that it's much more difficult to create compelling visuals than compelling gameplay. Gameplay either works or it doesn't. There are levels of quality in there, certainly, but once you've got your central game mechanic humming along, you're done with the bulk of the work. Everything else is details.

The visuals, though, can go on forever. You've got to model dozens of objects, texture them, and possibly animate them. The process is endless, and it's made even more nerve-wracking by the fact that it's always possible to make something look better. I could have spent weeks trying to create the perfect cardboard box, giving it so much character that you would gasp at seeing it for the first time. But I found that the "good enough" threshold for modeling and texturing comes fairly early in the process for me. Partly I was frustrated my lack of knowledge. I don't know the right tricks to make things look perfect, and I found my patience was limited for experimentation. So I generally created something that was close enough and went with it.

Maybe this means I'm not a natural-born modeler/texturer. Or that I should have been a programmer.

Self-promotion is a tricky game
I loved building the web site for SPUDZOOKA. In my day job I work on a large, convoluted corporate web site. It was fun to create something very simple from scratch. But now that it's there, how do I get people to see it? I can blog about it endlessly, be sure the site shows up on Google searches, submit it to game publishers like shockwave.com (we'll see if they respond), post about it on the Unity forum, and post something about it on Facebook. I've done all of the above, and I even added an e-mail-a-friend feature to the page where you play the game. But there's a critical mass to these things, and I haven't hit it yet. It's been an interesting test. I'll keep plugging away, but I've learned that it's a full-time job to promote something like this using the grass-roots tools of the Web.

If a target-shooting game takes four months...
How long will it take to create an RPG with memorable characters, a sweeping story, and a vast world to explore? This is the big one. It will take (more) years, and a lot of dedication to make it happen. I might be better off focusing on a series of smaller projects and putting the big project aside indefinitely. Or I could figure out a way to divide the big project into smaller ones. Maybe there's another kind of story I can tell that won't be so ridiculously large. Instead of aiming right an an epic, perhaps I should start with a short story.

Regardless of what I decide, I have to decide on something. I'll probably spend the next week or two mulling the possibilities and see what develops. SPUDZOOKA is the first step. Now I have to take the next.

Grand Theft Auto IV: early thoughts

2008-05-06T19:16:00.004-04:00

Clearly I've been a bit absent from the blog lately. I've got two excuses. One is that I wanted to let the SPUDZOOKA announcement percolate a little. The other is that I've been playing Grand Theft Auto IV in every spare moment. It's amazing that I managed to get SPUDZOOKA out the door at all considering the fact that I bought GTA a couple days before I finished it.

So here are a few thoughts about GTA based on my experience so far. The reasons I play? Entertaining gameplay and world-class writing.

Gameplay
Grand Theft Auto games have been known in the past for having some spotty gameplay. Driving has always been fun, but the weapon targeting system seems to get a complete overhaul with every release. As expected with GTA IV, the driving system and car physics are top notch. It's still amazingly fun just to cruise around town. Now that I've made may way to the second area of the game, there are finally some straight roads to fly down at top speed. I'm still getting used to the hand brake in this one, since it's so easy to skid, but I like the fact that you have to learn how to use the brakes if you're going to get around quickly.

The targeting system again has been revamped, and this time it's pretty good. After a little while getting used to it, I realized that it basically operates like a modified shooter control with a lock-on system added to it. You can walk around with your free target mode engaged and the system will automatically lock onto any enemies that come into view. It works pretty well.

They've also added a cover system, which lets you hide behind obstacles during a firefight. I've found this quite fun so far, since it gives me a way to take out targets systematically rather than just running in shooting like a madman, which I did a lot of in previous GTA titles.

Writing
Lots of people probably argue that gameplay is what makes GTA shine. It's just a fun world to interact with. This is certainly true, but I think the real difference between GTA and a lot of other games is its writing. The characters are bigger-than-life and well developed. Niko, being a typical GTA hero, basically just does what people ask him to, but he seems to have a nicely layered back story that's coming out bit by bit. Plus, a big reason I can drive around for hours is that the radio stations crack me up. This is comedy writing at its finest and a brilliant commentary on American culture.

It's not just the radio stations, though. GTA IV finally seems to have latched onto something that others in the series have flirted with but never explored fully: the American Dream. Sure, all the GTA titles have dealt with the idea of one man pulling his own way up through whatever means necessary. But III and Vice City were simple mob stories. There wasn't much to make you relate to the hero (in III he never spoke at all). He was just a criminal trying to get rich. San Andreas developed Carl's character a bit more and toyed with the idea that he was a product of his circumstances and was somehow trying to rise above all the violence in his life.

But Niko Bellic is different to me. He's a man ruined by his past, and he has come to the U.S. both to escape something and to find something (or someone). He finds Liberty City a very different place than he expected, complicated and damaged. It's this interaction between Niko and Liberty City, his search for inner peace in a complex and chaotic place, that gives GTA IV something special. Niko in effect personifies the city, which in turn is a powerful American symbol, full of as much repressed anger and fear, but full of life as well. I can see him slowly forming a connection to the city and its inhabitants, just like I am as the player, and it's a beautiful thing.

SPUDZOOKA is here!

2008-05-01T20:29:00.006-04:00

Yes, at long last, SPUDZOOKA is live and ready to play. You're excitement is intense, I can tell.

I made a few visual enhancements since the beta version, and I fixed a number of bugs, including one irritating one that would randomly cause people's browsers to crash (never a good thing for web-based game).

There's also a web site where you can learn a little about the tools I used to create the game and leave comments letting me know what you think.

Oh, and one more thing: there's a little surprise for people who play all the way through the levels. It was a much-requested feature. I hope you enjoy it. Ok, enough jibber-jabber. Go play SPUDZOOKA!

http://spudzooka-game.com

Spore Creature Creator

2008-04-28T22:16:00.003-04:00

Anyone following Spore with as much interest as me (by that I mean anyone who has signed up for the Spore newsletter) has no doubt already heard about the Spore Creature Creator. For everyone else, here's the deal:

On June 17 you'll be able to download the entire Spore creature interface, which lets you design as many zany, fantastical creatures as you want (I'm kind of curious how closely I can approximate millipede--or maybe one with hooves). The free version gives you access to about a quarter of the creature bits available in the full editor. For $9.99 you can get access to everything.

Aside from the little bit of extra income (yeah, I think they should just offer the whole thing for free), this little package does two important things for Maxis:

It introduces people to the game's editors. Not that Spore needs anymore hype, but the creature editors and the others like it in the game are likely to be the heart and soul of this thing. If people get hooked, they'll come back and buy the full game.
It gives the developers a way to populate their universe. This was one of my main questions about the game. How were they planning to create millions of creatures for people to interact with? Sure, the volume would be there over time, but a game has to be fun right out of the box if people are going to buy it in any large numbers. And, while I'm sure a sizable team of people is working on the game, they couldn't possibly create the number (or variety) of creatures necessary to make the game really stand out. This way, just get yourself a hundred thousand or so downloads (just being conservative). If each person creates 10 creatures, you've got your first million right there in a few days. Not bad at all.

For anyone who's wondering, any creatures you create will be available to you when you buy the full game in September.

Pretty exciting stuff. And since Apple announced a refreshed iMac line today, I can pick up my new Spore gaming machine in time for the June 17. Oh, and GTA IV tomorrow. When is that government rebate check supposed to get here?

SPUDZOOKA...almost...finished...

2008-04-22T23:26:00.002-04:00

It's getting close. I can smell it. I'm putting on the finishing touches now -- well, the last touches before I call it finished. Then there's a little matter of creating a web site for the game to live on.

I'm going camping this weekend, so the big launch will be most likely be sometime early next week. Maybe I'll be ready to do it Tuesday in celebration of the GTA IV release. Plus, games always come out on Tuesday. It's easier for the press that way.

On second thought, while maximizing the amount of press for SPUDZOOKA should certainly be a top priority, I think I'll just release it when it's ready. What is a solo game studio for, after all, if not rebellion?

14 days and counting...

2008-04-15T18:18:00.008-04:00

Shout out(s) and shaders

2008-04-14T19:56:00.005-04:00

Wanted to give a quick shout out to a kindred spirit, Marraboy over at Unity 3D -- Zero to Hero. He recently started a blog to chronicle his progress building a game with Unity and Cheetah 3D. He's only written a handful posts so far, but I just want to say, "You can do it, Marraboy!"

It's still by no means proven whether I can do it, but I did get some much-needed words of encouragement from a good friend over the weekend. This no-budget-game-development thing can get pretty daunting, particularly on days when I realize how much more there is to learn.

Case in point: Unity's ShaderLab. It's a programming interface for creating shaders in Unity (a shader describes how an object will look in the game -- what textures it will use, how it will react to light, etc.). This mind-bogglingly powerful feature of Unity is, I'm beginning to discover, the difference between amateur work and real professional visual quality. Sure, modeling and texture art are essential, but custom shaders add the flair.

Of course, working with shaders requires some knowledge of OpenGL's shader language, of which I have none, so I feel quite outmatched at the moment. As usual, though, I'm probably getting ahead of myself. SPUDZOOKA isn't done yet, and I can't get too caught up in the next thing.

No, I shouldn't be worrying too much about shaders yet. They just remind me that I need to take things one step at a time. Visual polish is not my strong suit, since I never had any formal training. But that's ok. I like to think that what I lack in skill, I make up in blind determination.

Casual games, social portals, and lots of money

2008-04-08T18:12:00.003-04:00

I've never been that interested in casual games. Aside from Tetris, which I played as a child when it was the coolest thing around, I've never spent more than 10 or 15 minutes playing a casual game.

And yet, with SPUDZOOKA getting closer to being finished, I find myself strangely drawn to the money-making possibilities of more laid back virtual entertainment. I don't expect SPUDZOOKA to make money. The main reason for this defeatist attitude is, of course, that I don't intend to sell it. It's my first game. It's not that good.

I do think a lot, though, about how I might make some extra cash making games. Developing casual games is one way to do that. It wouldn't be a lot of money, but this new feature article on Gamasutra by Daniel Cook (have I mentioned I really like their articles?) has put some crazy ideas in my head about how it might be possible. The secret? Online community. Create a place where people come to play your games and, once they arrive, make some friends. Sure they'll come back because they like your games, but they'll also come back to hang out.

There are some pretty daunting challenges, though, like customer support and the growing super-power of online casual game portals (or maybe the fact that you still have to crank out games). Cook suggests that well-known portals like Shockwave.com are essential to a blossoming casual-game business, but that their value is to help you win long-term customers, not sell one-off games. This is a good thought, since most portals don't demand exclusive rights to publish a game.

But, as one reader pointed out in a comment, what happens when the portals realize what's happening and won't promote your games unless you agree that they won't be attached to any other social space? Then you're left with nothing but word-of-mouth to generate new customers. That's where I am now with SPUDZOOKA. It's a struggle, and I'm not even selling it.

Despite the challenges, this article has my head buzzing with possibilities. But that's nothing new; my head is always fuzzy with crazy ideas and delusions of grandeur.

SPUDZOOKA beta is live!

2008-04-03T20:19:00.002-04:00

The SPUDZOOKA beta test is now live and ready for vigorous testing. Please leave comments and let me know your thoughts.

I made a number of enhancements to make gameplay a little smoother and the overall experience a little more interesting. Keep an eye out for:

Cannon animations
A new ammo type
Customizable paint jobs!
A simpler cannon editor (It's no longer possible to have more than one cannon, but that feature wasn't necessary anyway.)
Better ammo switching (Use the number keys now instead of the tab key.)
Some new sound effects
Two new levels

It's pretty exciting to have things coming together. There's still a long list of things I'd like to add to the game, but I'll have to decide how much more time to invest. Like I've always said, my real goal is to make games that tell stories, so I don't want to take away from that.

Hope you enjoy the beta!

SPUDZOOKA on the iPhone?

2008-03-31T20:47:00.003-04:00

Unity Technologies announced today that Unity will support development for the iPhone. Probably this means that the ability to build games in iPhone native format will eventually be built right into Unity. Currently it's possible to build games in a variety of formats (including Web player, Mac stand-alone, Mac Dashboard Widget, and PC stand-alone simply by choosing which one you want to build.

There's a lot of hype now, with the iPhone SDK now on the market that mobile gaming is going to take off. It could very well happen, and the Unity game engine is likely to be at the forefront of 3D gaming on the iPhone.

Very cool. Someday you might even be able to play SPUDZOOKA on your phone.

Narrative "modes" in video games

2008-03-26T19:05:00.003-04:00

As a follow-up to my last post about differences between Japanese and Western-style RPGs, I thought I would point to another article from Gamasutra (what can I say, they publish great articles) that I saw today. It's an interview with two of the people behind Portal, on which, if you haven't been reading lately, I have a bit of a fanboy crush.

It's a great interview (if a smidge rambly in spots), but the part that's relevant here is the bit about, well, narrative. Here's a quote from Eric Wolpaw, Portal's lead writer:

We had this theory that games tell two stories. There's the "story story" which is the cutscenes and the dialogue, and the "gameplay story" which is the story that's described by the actions you take in the game world. The theory was that the closer you could bring those two stories together, the more satisfying the game would be.

I spent years and years reviewing games, and that's something that always bothered me in games, where the delta between the two stories was real high. I promised myself someday that if I ever got the chance, I'd try to make a game where that delta was almost zero. It was a conscious decision that we wanted to try and keep that world.

This to me is a really important insight and helps explain the special sense of immersion and, for me, empowerment that comes from playing a game where your own actions in the game world are tightly aligned with the narrative being "told" in the game.

I've only played a few games that gave me this feeling. Portal is one; Myst is another. Both are first-person perspective games (where that perspective is never broken), and both are puzzle games. Both present a profoundly coherent sense of place. Seems like the start of a promising recipe. Even Myst, though, doesn't completely close the gap between "story story" and "gameplay story." As the player you wander around creating the "gameplay story." The "story story" has, for the most part, already happened and is revealed as you play through pages you find on the various islands.

In other words, your goal as the player in Myst is just to supply an ending to the "story story." In Portal you supply the whole thing, which is pretty special.

Seems like the same idea could be applied to RPGs in their various incarnations. In Japanese-style games a la Final Fantasy, the gap can be pretty wide. The story might be compelling and the characters unforgettable, but the gameplay mode and the story mode are totally distinct. Gameplay stops when narrative starts and vice versa. Western-style games maybe close the gap a bit, but there's still the sense that your total experience in the game world is much different than the story being told through the main quest line. Sure, I could convert my gameplay experience with Oblivion into a story, but, man, would it be boring.

Japanese vs. Western RPGs; story vs. gameplay

2008-03-24T20:59:00.007-04:00

Gamasutra posted an article a few days ago about the 20 essential Japanese RPGs. It's pretty long but worth a skim. I've spent most of my gaming life (until recently) fairly insulated from reviews and online chatter about the quality of games I played. As a result, I knew what I liked, but I didn't know if anyone else agreed. It was fun to read someone else's take on those games.

Turns out I have played quite a few of the ones listed, including:

Final Fantasy IV
Final Fantasy VI
Final Fantasy VII
Final Fantasy VIII
Final Fantasy X
Final Fantasy XII
Chrono Trigger
Chrono Cross

Lots of Square games on that list, obviously, but they were only one of two or three outfits creating US-bound RPGs in the 80s and 90s. Plus, I liked all their games, so I tended to go out and buy them.

I've never played Xenogears, but I did play the first installment of Xenosaga, and I definitely agree with this article's take on that game:

Still, once again, the plot [of Xenosaga] was simply far too ambitious for its own good, and the number of planned installments was cut down from six to three, compressing the plot even more. It didn't help that the first two games were saddled with terrible pacing issues, plodding cutscenes, and boring battle systems.

Japanese vs. "Western" RPGs
This article also intrigued me because I'm still working on Oblivion (which will no doubt be a looong process), and I've only just begun to understand the differences between Japanese and Western-style RPGs. This is yet another way in which I'm a little slow, but I have never really spent much time with any Western RPGs before Oblivion.

I tend to like story-based games with interesting characters, and Western RPGs have leaned away from story and more toward gameplay, with their open-ended worlds and emphasis on first-person role-playing.

To avoid launching into a rant about the state of stories in games (which you can find here at Blog of War, and also here and here), I'll just say that so far I still prefer the Japanese model. Most definitions of narrative require an some act of telling (by an author and/or narrator). It's this author who interprets events and helps shape their meaning.

Japanese-style RPGs tend to acknowledge the existence of an author/narrator and adopt a more cinematic style -- they tell a story. Western RPGs tend to drop you in a world and let you, in a sense, create your own story. The trouble with this model is two-fold for me:

Most of us aren't good story tellers. The things we do in these spaces probably isn't very interesting. If I choose to spend my time in Oblivion on alchemy, I'll just run around collecting seeds and roots all the time. Nothing riveting there. Sure, I could play the thief or the wizened wizard, but these are just types; they're not characters with flaws and emotions. I want characters.
There's no one to tell the story to. If a story needs a teller, it also, out of necessity, needs an audience. If a man tells a story in a forest and no one is there to listen, is it still a story? Sorry... The point is that I can certainly entertain myself in a sandbox-type game -- where I'm the story-teller with no audience -- but I find it far more compelling to be an active audience member, using the available gameplay to move a story along.

That's my two cents. What's your preference?

Open-ended dialog and moody NPCs

2008-03-17T22:56:00.006-04:00

I spent quite a few hours this weekend playing Oblivion. It's reasonably entertaining so far; the size of the world and the number of possibilities for gameplay really are impressive.

The thing that continues to amaze me, though, is the amount of dialog in the game. Seriously, they must have had dozens of people writing dialog what must be thousands of virtual inhabitants. Characters' dialog changes based on what's going on around them and their disposition toward you. It's all so well conceived. Unfortunately, it doesn't work.

Here's a little exchange illustrating how I often feel while shooting the breeze with denizens of Cyrodiil (paraphrased for your entertainment):

Me: Hello!
Sour-looking lizard man: What do you want?
Me: I'm new in town. What's with that paranoid elf guy running around town all the time?
Sour-looking lizard man: I don't know you well enough to talk about that.
Me: [Here I tell jokes and boast about my prowess as an adventurer to get the lizard man to like me. Then...] So, about that paranoid elf guy?
Sour-looking lizard man: Oh him. I think he's following me. He looks at me strangely sometimes, and often carries on about a conspiracy. I try not to let it bother me, but he really creeps me out.
Me: Tell me about the town. Did I say I was new here?
Sour-looking lizard man: The town is ok, I guess. Hey, can you help me gather a rare root to throw into a magic potion?
Me: Uh, sure.
Sour-looking lizard man: Great! I think there are some roots near the trees outside town.
Me: Right. Roots near trees -- got it. I'll let you know when I find some. Good-bye.
Sour-looking lizard man: Leave me alone.

Open-ended dialog systems are a great idea. In theory they create a real sense of place and give the impression that you're experiencing a living, breathing world. The trouble is they involve too much filler and not enough coherent conversation. Real conversation is much too complex for games at the moment, so relationships between the player and non-player characters (NPCs) -- or even between NPCs -- get distilled into grossly simplified numerical values like "disposition" or "reputation."

For a class once I created a dynamic dialog system designed to address some of these issues by scoring relationships between characters using several attributes instead of just one (for example, trust, loyalty, friendliness, anxiety). The idea what that everything you said to or did for an NPC would affect those attributes. Over time you would actually build a "relationship" by spending time with NPCs, and the quality of that relationship would have a dramatic affect on what kind of information they would share.

Aside from the obvious practical issue of writing all that dialog, my grand system and others like it face a pretty serious challenge -- there's too much dialog.

The beauty of closed systems (where dialog is delivered through cut-scenes or one-shot statements) is that they can be more carefully crafted. Sure, they may sacrifice "realism," but let's face it, 90% of the words we utter are unbelievably mundane. Anyone reading this knows it's certainly true about me. A truly open-ended, flexible dialog system would be prohibitively expensive to create and populate with content.

I haven't given up on Oblivions NPCs yet. Right now I find their moodiness kind of endearing, but who knows how long that will last. I'm fickle like that.

A useful user interface, part 2: The GUI

2008-03-12T19:42:00.003-04:00

I've been running the play test of SPUDZOOKA for several days now, and I've learned some really useful things. Special thanks to everybody who has given the game a run for its money. It's going to end up a lot better because of it. (If you haven't tried it out yet, you can play here.)

The feedback has been positive overall, but being my own harshest critic, I feel like the game still leaves quite a lot to be desired. I think the concept is a decent one -- a little light-hearted destruction goes a long way -- but there are some tweaks to the user interface that will make the player experience better. Thus begins the second part of my brief series on user interfaces.

The graphical user interface
There are two main elements to SPUDZOOKA's GUI, and probably most games with a play-level-then-upgrade structure (that's a technical term -- you like it?): the HUD (heads up display) and the upgrade interface.

I wanted SPUDZOOKA's HUD (the graphical interface elements that appear on the screen while you're playing a level) to be as simple as possible. In the top left corner of the screen, there's a score display and a timer. These elements simply let you know how you're doing. The timer is most important while playing, so I think it needs to be much more prominent, maybe even moved to the top-center and given a more graphical treatment.

In the lower left there are two elements, a squarish graphic with a number in it, and, next to that, a smaller squarish graphic with some potatoes in it. These are both really important, but I don't think they work very well.

The button-looking graphic with the number is there to denote which cannon you are currently using. You only start the game with one cannon, and there's no indication what this number means until you edit your cannon for the first time. Even then, you need to build and save a second cannon before the number means anything. Right now there aren't enough levels for that to be necessary. I'm thinking about cutting out the ability to build multiple cannons -- we'll see.
The small graphic showing the potatoes is there to denote your current ammunition. Again, you won't know what it means until you edit your cannon for the first time (I think that's ok), but a lot of people who played couldn't figure out how to change ammo. The trick is that you can't always change ammo -- it depends on which kind of barrel is attached to your cannon. I think the meaning of the ammo icons didn't translate well from the editor, and people didn't remember whether they had access to multiple ammo types or not. Probably I need to add an icon for each type of available ammo in the HUD and give some indication of the currently selected ammo.

That's it for the HUD. I wanted to include enough elements to keep players informed during, levels but I think I need to go a little further to explain things.

Now onto the cannon upgrade interface. The idea here is that players can mix and match cannon components to create up to three cannons that not only look cool, but have different strengths and weaknesses.

To make this mix-and-match feature work, I needed several elements:

A way to select components of various types,
A way to buy components that can later be mixed or matched,
A place to display the current cannon configuration and its stats,
Some indication of which cannon (of the three available slots) was currently being edited,
A way to save a new configuration or return to the previously saved cannon in that slot.

The three component selection areas work pretty well and are fairly intuitive. The result of cycling between components is immediately apparent. The data display for the current configuration seems to make sense as well (except maybe the list of available ammo).

Things start to get tricky, though, when players try to figure out the function of the buy and save buttons. The problem is that upgrading your cannon is a two-step process. First you have to buy the new component, at which point it goes into storage, and then you have to save that component to your cannon, at which point it moves from "in storage" to "in use." The previously saved component on that cannon moves back into storage and becomes available for use at a later time.

It's the inventory concept that makes things too complicated. There are (small) text elements displaying the number of each component in storage and in use, and it's clear that buying a component adds one to storage. Nevertheless, the intuitive behavior, I think, is for the "buy" button to save that new component immediately to the cannon. This seems to be what most people expected.

My attempts to hint at the desired behavior probably weren't enough. The background on the component selectors turns red when you don't have enough in storage to use that component in a cannon (meaning you have to buy one). The background of the full cannon display on the right turns red when you haven't saved that configuration, and you can't save it until you have enough of each component in storage (which would cause the background color of the components to be blue). In other words, once everything is blue, you're good to continue on to the next level. If anything is red, you've got a problem.

If I'm going to keep this two-step system, I think I need to create some additional cues in the interface to let people know what to do. I could make the "buy" button flash when an additional component is required and/or make the "save" button flash when the cannon is ready to be saved. Those two things would probably help a lot.

You can probably tell I've put a lot of time into the cannon editor and the GUI for SPUDZOOKA. I think my first go was passable -- players could figure it out after a few tries -- but I need it to be obvious on the first try. And that will take some more work.

SPUDZOOKA play test!

2008-03-08T16:07:00.004-05:00

I'm happy to announce today that my first play test of SPUDZOOKA is ready for your perusal and feedback, constructive or otherwise.

Please take a few minutes to play through the game and then write comments on this post about your experience. Feel free to comment on any part of the game, including:

Overall fun factor
Graphics/visuals
User interface
Cannon upgrade system (could you figure it out?)
Sound/music
Any bugs, funky stuff with playing the game in your browser

Since this is just a test version, I feel obligated to include a small disclaimer: While the gameplay is relatively complete, you will certainly encounter bugs, and there are probably some considerable balance issues with the various cannon components. In fact, there are several cannon combinations that don't even look physically possible. One final note -- the paint job portion of the cannon editor doesn't work yet.

Ok, without further ado, you can play SPUDZOOKA here!

(To play, you will need to install the Unity Web player, which can be downloaded free for Mac and Windows here.)

New Nine Inch Nails

2008-03-04T22:12:00.004-05:00

For all the Nine Inch Nails fans out there, Trent and a few cohorts have put out a new album: Ghosts I-IV. Coming pretty close on the heels of Year Zero, this one follows Radiohead's lead and is available primarily in digital format. Oh, and they're all instrumental. I've always been a fan of the more ambient NIN stuff anyway, so this is quite exciting.

There are several options, including a free version containing just the first 9 tracks (there are 36, count 'em, 36 in all) and a $5 dollar download only containing all 36 tracks, a PDF booklet, and some cool web-ready images. There's also a $10, dual-CD purchase due to be shipped in April.

I went for the $5 download, and it's quite good so far. There's so much music for the price, though, even a mediocre release would still be worth it. It did take me two days to get it, since the web site was so hosed up.

Score another one for the bands fighting against record-company tyranny.

A useful user interface, part 1: Play controls

2008-02-28T22:18:00.008-05:00

As a professional "web guy," I have more than a passing interest in user interfaces. The most brilliant concept or the most beautiful design means nothing if people can't accomplish their desired tasks on the web. The same is true, of course, for any kind of application, serious or silly.

For SPUDZOOKA to appeal a wide audience, its play controls and graphical interface must be simple, intuitive, and easy to master. Frustration is the opposite of fun. I don't know yet if I've succeeded in delivering the fun, but here's a look (in two parts) at the basic process I used to design the game's various interface elements.

Play controls
SPUDZOOKA is primarily a target-shooting game, but it borrows a lot of its play controls from first-person shooters. The challenge is to keep the controls as streamlined as possible. Here's what the player needs to be able to do, and the reasoning behind the control scheme I chose for each task:

Aim and fire the cannon -- The goal of each level is to destroy as many targets as possible within a set time limit, so aiming and firing is kind of important. Thankfully, as anyone who ever played a first-person shooter will know, the mouse provides a perfect interface for this: move the mouse to aim; click to shoot. Easy enough.
Switch weapons -- Lots of target-shooting games stop there, but SPUDZOOKA lets you carry more than one potato cannon at a time, so there has to be a way to switch between them. Another first-person shooter convention fits well here: using the number keys to switch weapons.
Switch ammo -- Yes, more switching. Clearly everyone knows that different spud cannons shoot different kinds of ammunition, so I had to work that into the game. The number keys are out for this one (even the higher numbers), since they are being used to switch weapons. I could map several letter keys to various ammo types, but that still seemed redundant and possibly confusing. Instead I decided to use a single button (tab) to cycle through all the available ammo types for the active cannon. The disadvantage here is that it could take a bit longer to select the desired ammo. However, because each cannon will only be able to shoot a few types of ammo, a cycling control seemed to work well enough (let me know if you disagree).

That's it. Seasoned FPS gamers (who made it this far) may have noticed that one important control is missing: the ability to walk around. Seems like a big omission, I know, but I have decided for the time being that the player will be stationary. I'm sure it seems limiting, but there are a couple of reasons for it.

The levels are small and potato cannons shoot a long way. If you can run around and shoot things, it might be too easy. Enabling really slow movement would probably irritate people. Better not to risk it.
I don't want to complicate things. A lot of the skill in FPS games comes from the player's ability to move and aim at the same time. I know this because I am quite inept at jumping while shooting in Halo, which seems to be necessary for survival in multiplayer mode. While plenty of people certainly possess these skills (they have all killed me in Halo), I don't want those skills to be a requirement for my game. I want to focus the player's attention on choosing the right cannon and ammunition for clearing obstacles and hitting targets, not on maneuvering quickly and dexterously through space.

Once you play through a few levels, you can tell me whether you're completely bored standing in place. In part 2, a look at the graphical user interface.

Good progress...and a long way to go

2008-02-28T21:38:00.006-05:00

SPUDZOOKA is coming along pretty nicely now. I've got the backbone of the game working, which means that it's possible to play through several levels and edit your potato cannon in between. You can also change cannons and ammunition on the fly. Everything fits together, and I don't get any code errors when I play through it. All things considered, that's pretty good.

The bulk of the work now is in two places:

The graphical interface. I need to make it prettier and, I hope, completely intuitive. The goal is for people to be able to play with minimal instructions. I figure a casual game like this can't survive more than a few seconds of, "What am I supposed to do?"
Level design. I've got a couple test levels built, just to get the flow of the game set up, but they will need to be completely redone. Thankfully I set things up so building new levels shouldn't be too hard.
Ok, three places. I also need to polish up the sound effects and come up with some music. Naturally I plan to compose and record it myself (I've gotten this far, why bring in anyone else now?) That could take a while, but it'll be fun.
Well...maybe four (nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition). The whole point of building this thing is for people to play. So I have to put the game out there. At the moment the plan is to publish it on a web site, which I have to build. I don't envision anything too complicated, but it'll take a little time.

My goal is to have the game itself finished by the end of March. I doubt I can get the web site done by then as well, but who knows. I'm hoping to have something for you all to play test in another week.

A virtual haircut

2008-02-25T19:08:00.002-05:00

Check this out, folks. One of my friends pointed me to a really cool YouTube video containing some amazing sound design.

WAIT: Before you press play, put on some headphones. It won't be as cool otherwise.

Yeah, ears are funny looking, but they're pretty cool, right?

EA and TakeTwo

2008-02-25T18:55:00.003-05:00

A quick news post today to let everyone know (I was a little slow to find out) that EA has made a bid to purchase TakeTwo, owners of Rockstar Games and makers of the Grand Theft Auto series. TakeTwo has refused the bid, but the folks at EA apparently aren't backing down; they have published this open letter to TakeTwo and the rest of the gaming public. Thanks to Screen Play (an Australian game news blog that I read) for covering the story.

As a huge fan of the GTA series, I don't quite know what to make of this. Certainly the series will continue regardless of what happens with these two companies, but I hope GTA IV won't be delayed too much because of it.

The similarities between EA's offer and Microsoft's rebuffed offer to buy Yahoo are pretty obvious here. All we need is EA's chief rival to come out publicly condemning the acquisition as hazardous to gaming public's right to virtual entertainment. Get on it, Vivendi.

I dream of GDC

2008-02-21T19:30:00.006-05:00

One of these years I'll actually go to GDC. It would be nice of course not to foot the bill myself, but that may be my only option. There seems to be a lot going on at this year's show, including a keynote address by the guy I wrote my master's thesis about, Ray Kurzweil.

But if I can't go, at least I can read all the news that comes out of the show. This report in particular, about a game designer named Blow (not sure where he came up with that) and his ten new challenges for game design. I love reading articles about game design and the theory behind it. They get the academic side of my brain going (my inner academigeek?) and help me understand different ways of looking at games.

Faithful readers may remember that I tend to take a very analytical approach to game design, and Mr. Blow apparently bristles at that approach, calling it "sterile." Thankfully, he provides some useful (if somewhat obvious) alternative paradigms for people thinking about game design.

Aside from thought-provoking and mind-bending keynote speeches, probably the biggest news to come out of GDC this year is Microsoft's announcement that they are launching, later this year, Xbox LIVE community games, essentially a YouTube of gaming where anyone can create games (using Microsoft's XNA development tools) and publish them for people to play. Bruce Everiss gives a dramatic account of the news in which he heralds "a flowering of innovation and creativity beyond anything the game industry has ever seen before. Probably beyond what any creative industry has seen before." Whoa, there.

I doubt Microsoft's announcement will have much impact on me in the short term, since I use a Mac-based game development platform. However, this does open the door for far more indie games, and I will be shocked if Sony and Nintendo don't release a similar system for their consoles. It will certainly give me a lot more insight into my competition. Unity is already equipped for Wii development, so if that happens (and if Wii development kits become more easily available), I'll be ready.

Maybe there's hope after all

2008-02-18T18:05:00.002-05:00

It's easy to get discouraged as a solo game developer. There's just so much to do and so many skills to learn. Indeed, I accept that I will ever be more than a hack at most of the skills involved in game development.

But this post over at Tales of the Rampant Coyote (a blog from indie developer Rampant Games) is proof that indie developers can create expansive, immersive role-playing games.

No, I've never played any of the games listed in that post. Most probably won't even run on my Mac. What gives me hope is that the list is so long. It means someone is actually publishing completed games.

SPUDZOOKA isn't an RPG, but it will be my first full game. And I will finish it. I have modest hopes for it. I hope some of you will play it. I hope some of you who play it will enjoy it. Everything else is just gravy.

What I really want to do is make games that tell stories. I have to start somewhere, but it's nice to think that maybe one day I'll publish a game that makes somebody's list.

Spore article in Newsweek

2008-02-13T21:42:00.005-05:00

Another post about Spore today. Turns out Newsweek got an exclusive interview with Will Wright that published yesterday. Wright gives some great information about the things that delayed Spore for so long and provides a few exciting insights about the social-networking-inspired features in the game.

The interview is divided into two parts:

Here's a paragraph from the first part describing a change they made recently as a result of focus group feedback:

For instance, one of the things that we changed late last year was....We noticed universally when people were able to just drop into any editor that they wanted to and play around with it--that was a much more entertaining experience for them to start understanding what the gameplay was. The gameplay made a lot more sense to them after spending time in the editor designing something. Originally we were going to force the players to start at Cell and play their way up through every level, but we decided that we wanted to make it feel more like a toy box of the universe. So we let players drop into any level they want to, right off the bat. We have an entry path for every level, straight off the bat, where you grab somebody else's pollinated content as your starting point if you didn't play Creature for instance. We found the players enjoyed browsing the levels lightly at the beginning, and trying a little bit at each level, then they would generally go back, start a full game from the Cell level, and play the whole thing straight through.

I'm planning a more technical post later this week, so please don't fret that my blog is devolving into a run-of-the-mill video game news blog. It is still decidedly a run-of-the-mill game production blog.

Spore release date announced

2008-02-12T18:30:00.000-05:00

Now for the most disappointing news of the day. EA has announced the release date for Spore. After months of saying that it would be released sometime this spring, a press release hit the streets today announcing a September 7 release. Yes, September.

I remember first hearing about Spore in 2005. Of course, I certainly understand that great games take a long time to develop, and few developers are allowed the leeway to take their time to develop the best possible game. Blizzard, with its golden touch, comes to mind, and Maxis. I also understand that Spore is a hugely ambitious game, and I will certainly buy it when it comes out. I may even buy a new Mac to play it on. But this game better be worth it. Three years is a long time to wait for a game.

Judging from all the screenshots and videos out on the web, the bulk of Spore has been complete for some time. To me that means the delay has either been caused by some sort of unforeseen technical problem or -- and this is what worries me -- it wasn't turning out to be much fun. It will still probably be a great game. Blizzard basically started over on Warcraft III when its original concept ended up being kind of slow. And that turned out to be a wonderfully entertaining game.

So, yes, I'd rather wait for a brilliant game than play a good one now, but sometimes it's just hard to be patient.

SPUDZOOKA update

2008-02-07T20:51:00.000-05:00

Just a quick post tonight to give an update on SPUDZOOKA. I've gotten back into a bit of a groove this week and made some progress modeling the interchangeable components of the spud cannon.

Next week the plan is to finish up the modeling and start the process of texturing. First I need to map the UVs on all the components, and then I can play around with the textures. Texturing should be fun, though I'm still not very good at it. Thankfully PVC pipe generally isn't the most complicated object in terms of texture. Still, if I want to give the player any choices of color or paint job on their spud cannons, I'll need to play around with some different options. One paint style that seems hard to escape is camouflage, since that seems to fit well with game's the paramilitary overtones.

Once I finish modeling and texturing the cannon components, I'll need to program the cannon upgrade interface and be sure that the various cannon possibilities all behave appropriately when firing, etc. There are plenty of things left to do after that, but the main one will be designing a few basic levels so I can get some feedback from you.

So stay tuned. Things should come together pretty well in the next week or two.

New Unity resources

2008-02-06T18:23:00.000-05:00

Last week Unity Technologies announced Unity 2.0.2, which has a few new features and a bunch of fixes. More importantly, though, they posted a new resources section on their site, which I hope will eventually be home to tons of great materials to get people started with Unity.

Right off the bat, this little area contains a wonderful package of pre-made nature assets, from trees to rocks, grass, and textures. According to the license agreement (as far as I understand it), these assets are free to use in commercial projects without giving credit to Unity Technologies as long as they are used only in games created with Unity. I can handle that.

I continue to be blown away by Unity. Someone on the Unity support forums has said that Unity is so fun to use, it's almost a game in itself. Every time I open it up, I have new ideas for features to add to my games or gameplay mechanics to try out. More than that, I rarely get frustrated when working in Unity. That's not something I can say about many pieces of software. It's all a testament to the brilliant design of this product, with it's straightforward interface and powerful features. Great stuff.

Ok, my fanboy post is over now.

The anatomy of a zombie

2008-02-01T18:41:00.001-05:00

As expected, my new Xbox has found a way to cut into my game development time. There are, of course, many excuses I can employ to rationalize this. The simplest one is to blame the Xbox, as if it had a mind of its own or was being controlled remotely by Steve Ballmer himself.

That, of course, is ridiculous. Steve Ballmer would never control my Xbox himself--he would certainly get a low-level lackey to do it.

Ok, maybe it's my own fault that I'm playing so much, but at least I can tell myself that it's as much research as entertainment. How can I expect to make compelling games if I haven't even played the latest and greatest? Yes, it's definitely research.

I have learned several important lessons during this crucial research.

Every good first-person shooter must have an alien invasion, either from outer space or some other dimension--the more hellish the better.
Said aliens must have the ability to infest human corpses. Several methods are acceptable, including face grabbing, which clearly gives the alien rudimentary control of the host's motor functions, and fungal-like infestation, which transforms the host's upper body into something lumpy and terrible.
The zombie-like creatures that result from alien infestation must be slow-moving, hide frequently in dark corners, and be extremely hard to kill. Shotgun blasts to the head (or what's left of it) tend to be most effective.
Once knocked down, zombies must have the ability to get up and attack you again. While it may seem unnecessary (why not just send twice as many zombies?), it's very important to kill alien zombies correctly. A resilient zombie is a scary zombie, after all.

With such valuable insights, I'm sure you can see now why my research is so important to me. I'm also sure you'll understand if my progress on SPUDZOOKA slows down just a little bit while I study.

The wonder of vegetable firearms

2008-01-29T20:39:00.000-05:00

One of the main features of SPUDZOOKA is a way to upgrade and customize your potato cannon as you work your way through the game. Since I have limited personal experience with potato cannons, the need exists to do a little research. After all, how many varieties of potato cannon can there really be?

I have spent some time scouring the endless depths of the internet to find the best of the world's spud cannon engineers, and I'm happy to report that their ingenuity truly is astounding. From $20 designs fashioned with a few pieces of PVC piping to semi-automatic models and, yes, silencers, I found quite a bit more variety than expected.

To illustrate the point, I offer you here a small nibble of the loaded baked potato that is spud cannon design.

This site has three basic designs and very detailed instructions for building them.
Spud Gun Extreme is a remarkable site with some nice designs and demo videos. Sure, they're selling something (their cannons), but this site must be like gold for all the male cheerleaders out there looking to pick up a t-shirt gun.
John W. Cornwell offers some nice pics of his large design and a frightening disclaimer about the dangers of exploding PVC pipe.

All these cannons give me lots of ideas for the game, and I hope it will be fun for folks to build a custom virtual cannon. There are limits, though. As much as I would like to, I'm not sure I'll be able to offer anything quite so imposing and ... manly ... as this guy's toy:

Back in the saddle

2008-01-26T15:55:00.000-05:00

Well, I'm finally finished with all my January traveling, so I can get back to a regular schedule for blogging and working on SPUDZOOKA. The only problem is my Xbox 360... I'm worried it will find a way to eat into my productivity. The best way to handle it is probably to limit my gaming time and only play once I have made progress on my own game. It will be tough, but I think I can pull it off.

So what do I think of the Xbox so far? I love it. 2007 saw a great batch of games released, and while I can't afford them all at once, I feel like I've finally stepped back into the main flow of the gaming world. I've been so consumed with creating games, I haven't played very many of them. That's good in a way, since being creative seems a more worthwhile pursuit; however, it's vital to stay current on the best games so I know where the game industry is heading.

Ok, I can't call myself current yet. Here are the games I've got for the 360 at the moment (aside from the giveaway games that came with it):

The Orange Box
Halo 3
Oblivion

Yeah, that's it. The Orange Box has been fantastic so far. Portal, as I mentioned before, blew me away. I'm loving Half Life 2. The setting is wonderfully rich and detailed, the story is brilliantly told, the levels are well designed, and (this is the main thing), the sense of immersion is never broken. There are no cut-scenes that take away control. The people you meet will talk to you, but you don't have to listen. Even loading screens maintain your point of view.

Sure, there are some things that aren't very realistic, like the age-old shooter convention of carrying around an arsenal of weapons and ammo. Where exactly does Gordon Freeman store the gravity gun when he's not using it? Maybe I don't want to know.

The one-man arsenal problem is actually one of the cooler aspects of Halo. Specifically, they avoid it. You can't carry more than two weapons at a time. Sure, you're seven feet tall, have a five foot vertical leap, and are essentially immortal, but at least you can't carry around too many weapons. Still, it adds a nice variety to the gameplay, since you don't always have the option to choose the best weapon for a specific situation.

Oblivion is quite fun as well. I've never much gotten into extremely open-ended RPGs (since story has always been my primary interest), but I find that the more I play, the more I enjoy the freedom the game gives me to explore. The leveling system has some nice elements to it, but I also think it has some problems. I'll save my thoughts on that for another post.

So there's a quick update on my Xbox playing so far. As you can see I have quite enough to keep me busy for a few months. There's quite a list of other games I want to play. Maybe someday I'll actually be caught up with the rest of the gaming world. On second thought, nah.

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On an unrelated note, I want to congratulate one of my life-long friends and his wife, who have just had their first child. I know they are very proud. Now I just need to find a time to meet the little guy.

Back from Argentina -- an update

2008-01-17T19:15:00.000-05:00

Well, my wife and I made it back from Argentina safely. We had an amazing trip. The highlight was probably glacier watching and ice-trekking near El Calafate.

On a video game front, I finally entered 2005 on Christmas day and got an Xbox 360. After returning from the southern hemisphere, I started a Halo 3 co-op campaign with my brother. It's quite fun, though he seems to quadruple my score on every level. Maybe it's because the last console shooter I played was GoldenEye (yes, that means I haven't played Halo or Halo 2 -- yet).

I also picked up a copy of the The Orange Box. Again, I'm late to the game on this, but I have never played Half Life 2. Mainly I bought it because of Portal, though. I had read a lot about it and was really looking forward to playing it. Yes, Portal is a short game, but I think it's the perfect length for exploring the possibilities of a single game mechanic.

I played through the whole thing in one day (with some healthy Halo 3 time in the middle) and loved every minute of it. The best thing is that it got even more fun as I went along. The more I think about it, the more I think that makes Portal one of the best games I've ever played. Seriously. Most games hope to keep a pretty steady entertainment level. But this one just seemed to get better and better without introducing any new gameplay mechanics. It's a great concept with great level design and great writing. If SPUDZOOKA is half as fun, I'll be quite pleased with myself.

Speaking of SPUDZOOKA (sorry for the stream-of-consciousness post), it may be another week or so before I can resume regular work on it. I am traveling to the UK for work next week and will be gone for five days (busy month).

Anyway, I'm back, and I hope to get my posts back on some sort of normal schedule in the next few weeks. Thanks to everyone who has kept coming back in my absence. I know it doesn't take long for a blog to peter out.

El fin del mundo

2008-01-07T20:13:00.000-05:00

Greetings from Argentina! My wife and I arrived the day before in a city called Ushuaia. It is the world´s southern-most city and, for the benefit of tourists like us, contains countless signs and t-shirts declaring it to be el fin del mundo, the end of the world.

We've had internet access in all of our hotels so far, but we've had an all-day excursion almost every day. Upon arriving in Ushuaia, we were surprised to discover that there's a PC in our hotel room with free internet access.

It's currently 11:39 and not quite dark outside. Today we went riding in a 4x4 down to a remote lake where we had a traditional Argentine asado (basically a cookout). Then we went canoeing on another lake. It was great fun.

We have an early start tomorrow, so I can't write much (and all the keys on the keyboard are different). We're thinking about creating a web site to chronicle our trip, so I'll let you know if we end up doing that.

Seven days now until we fly home. It's been a great trip so far. I'll try to post more details later, if I can find time between touring, eating, and sleeping.

Christmas vacation

2007-12-25T15:53:00.000-05:00

Wanted to do three things in my post today:

Wish everyone a merry Christmas. Mine has been great so far. Got to spend lots of quality time with my family and my wife's family, all of whom are wonderfully kind, generous people.
Let you all know that my wife an I are leaving tomorrow for an extended vacation in Argentina. I'll be returning in mid-January, so I may not be posting for a few weeks. If I have the opportunity, I will post a few accounts of my trip as we go along, so if you're interested, please keep an eye on the blog the next few weeks.
Update you on the status of SPUDZOOKA. It's coming along quite well, but I didn't get as far as I would have liked before the holiday/travel madness started. I'll publish a demo level when I return and am able to get a little more polish on it.

Once again, I hope everyone is having a happy holiday season. It's been a good year, and I'll talk to you in a few weeks!

Virtual reality and the Wii

2007-12-23T19:10:00.000-05:00

Saw a really cool YouTube video over at Independent Gaming (strangely, the post seems to have been removed from the blog). The video is of a guy describing (and demonstrating) how to set up a VR display using the Nintendo Wii. Really cool stuff. Wouldn't surprise me if this makes its way into a few games in the next year or two.

The perils of self-publishing

2007-12-18T17:49:00.000-05:00

There's a nice post from Leo Stableford today about the pros and cons of self-publishing. He's discussing things in context of writing, but I have a feeling many of the same issues apply to self-publishing games.

It would be easy enough to post SPUDZOOKA to a site of my own designing, set up a Google AdSense account and maybe earn a few dollars. If I did a decent job promoting the game, people might come play it.

On the other hand, if I attempt to get my game published on a well-trafficked game site like Shockwave.com, I would definitely get more players and could potentially make more money. The question is whether self-publishing would hurt my chances of being published on a site like Shockwave. Honestly I don't know. The game publishing business is certainly not as well established as print publishing, so my guess is that there are still more avenues available for indie game developers to publish and distribute their games.

I'm just starting to research the possibilities, but maybe I'm getting ahead of my self. I still have a game to finish before I can even publish it myself.

Introducing SPUDZOOKA

2007-12-13T17:31:00.000-05:00

It's simple. It's fun. It's vegetarian. It's SPUDZOOKA.

SPUDZOOKA is a potato cannon shooting game (as one reader already guessed). It's designed to be super easy to learn and (I hope) really fun to play.

I'm still in the early stages of development, but things are coming together pretty quickly.

Some features
Like most casual games, SPUDZOOKA is built around a simple game mechanic. In this case it's shooting potatoes at targets. There are a million target shooting games out there, but this one will have a few features that I hope will make it stand out:

Play in 3D. Most casual target shooters are still Flash-based. SPUDZOOKA's realistic 3D environment should make it more immersive.
Customize your cannon. As you progress, you'll earn points that can be spent on new parts for your potato shooter. Barrels will affect ammunition and fire speed. Combustion chambers will affect power. Stands will affect accuracy.
Use various kinds of ammo. Potatoes come in all shapes and sizes, and they're all good for shooting.
Vent your frustrations on inanimate objects. Part of the fun of SPUDZOOKA is finding targets, which are often hidden behind obstacles such as boxes, crates, shelves, and barrels. You'll have to use your potatoes to knock them out of the way.

I've got some other features in mind, but they will take a bit longer to implement. Casual games are at their best when they're addictive, and that means you can keep coming back without playing through the same content every time. I'll save the details of my plans for another post, but my idea should keep things interesting.

I'll post a test level for everyone to play as soon as it's ready. I'm leaving the country on a long vacation right after Christmas, so I hope to have something ready by then.

The "social gaming" phenomenon

2007-12-12T20:12:00.000-05:00

As a follow-on to my last post, I thought I would point everyone to a Gamasutra article published yesterday that predicts the next big thing in gaming (now that music games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band are a "phenomenon").

The analysts polled in the article all seem to agree that the future of video games (the short-term future anyway) is going to revolve around "social gaming," games designed to be played with multiple people present in the room.

A couple of the analysts make a nice (if a bit obvious) comparison between such social video games and the classical board games of a generation (or two) ago. The current crop of games happens to be focused on music, but music isn't the root of the phenomenon, according to these folks. I never much cared for traditional board games, but I do agree with them -- we're just witnessing the next incarnation of group entertainment.

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On an unrelated note, here's a quick hint about the subject of my casual side project...

Rock Band guilt

2007-12-10T17:51:00.000-05:00

There's a great post over at Geek Studies today about Rock Band. The gist is that games just can't win:

If a game features violent activity that we could never (and, hopefully, would never) enact in real life, it gets criticized for encouraging real-life violence. If a game features non-violent activity that might even be considered worthwhile in real life, it gets criticized for discouraging real-life action.

In short, Rock Band has been getting some criticism (granted, it's pretty benign) for effectively discouraging people from learning to play real music.

I agree that this is a pretty ridiculous assertion, but I think the more important observation in this post is that games still seem to occupy some sort of limbo wherein we (as productive members of society) are allowed to play, but only if we feel some requisite twinge of guilt during or after all the fun.

I admit to playing Rock Band at a friend's house until 3 AM on consecutive nights. I marvel at the fact that I, the guy who flatly refuses to sing or dance in public, will excitedly take the microphone and sing songs far outside my vocal range while strutting in place (picture Mick Jagger) and dancing with the microphone stand (picture Steven Tyler--yes, my friend bought a microphone stand).

This is fun in its purest form, yet every time my friends and I (including my wife, and her sister, and my brother's wife) gather to play this game, someone will utter, once every half hour or so, "This is some nerdy shit." It's as if we all hear the little voice of society whispering, "You're wasting your time. Video games are for losers."

So what, I say! No one anywhere does anything productive on Friday night. None of us will ever be a rock star. That's not the point. The point is entertainment; the point is fellowship. And that's a lesson I learned from South Park.

An introduction to lightmapping

2007-12-06T22:18:00.001-05:00

I've learned a lot in the last few days about lightmapping, the process of "baking" lighting effects into the texture on a 3D object. I've heard it described as a "poor man's lighting effect." For me, that's a true statement. I can't currently afford the pro version of Unity, which includes dynamic, real-time shadows, so the next best option is to map static shadows into my scenes.

Despite being less flashy, lightmapping is considerably less expensive in terms of processing. Ultimately, I think it's a fantastic value. The effect is great, and the cost is minimal.

Lightmapping is a tough concept to get your head around. Wikipedia has a brief article on it, but it's kind of technical. Here's the gist:

Generally the best way to control lighting is in your 3D modeling application (the image to the right was rendered in my 3D app). You can build a number of objects, texture them, and light them in whatever way you choose. The trouble is that rendering images with sophisticated lighting is much too slow for a real-time game engine.
When applying textures to 3D objects for games, you have to "unwrap" the object onto a flat surface that then gets painted with a texture (a tedious process called UV mapping). The texture is then wrapped back around the object.
Most 3D modeling applications now allow objects to have multiple UV sets. In other words, the main texture can use one set of UV coordinates, and another texture can be attached to the second set.
The lightmapping process takes advantage of this second UV set by converting lighting information from the 3D application into a flat texture that can be applied to an object on top of the primary texture. The result is an object that looks like it's being lit, even when no lights are present.
Since lighting is one of the most processor-intensive tasks in real-time 3D processing, lightmapping is tremendously beneficial from a performance standpoint. The downside is that the "baked" lighting isn't dynamic and won't apply to any moving objects in the scene (well, you could do it, but it would look pretty strange).

These before and after images illustrate the point. The first one is a screenshot of a scene with no lighting and no lightmapping. The second image uses lightmapped textures, but still has no in-game lights. As you can see, the cube that should be lit by the light coming through the window (if this were the real world), is not receiving any light at all, since there are actually no lights in the scene.

Probably the best approach for me is to use some combination of lightmapping and in-game lighting. The result won't be perfect, but it will be close enough until I can spring for the pro version of Unity.

The holidaily grind

2007-12-04T17:40:00.000-05:00

Ah, the holidays. Nothing is better for turning optimistic productivity into an overwhelming sense of "I accomplished nothing today." My blogging pace has suffered, as you might have noticed, at the arrival this funny thing we call December. It's a time when the routine balance between personal and professional inevitably tilts one way or the other -- and neither direction favors hobbies.

Nevertheless, I'm making some progress on my side project. Currently I'm working to model and texture the main environment for the game. Though this project is far less demanding on the artistic side, the work still has me looking at quite a long list of required assets. But today I found some good advice on art for indie games.

I programmed some of the basic mechanics for this project back in the summer when I first had the idea and was playing around with Unity, so once the main environment is finished, I'll be able to focus on level design and refining the gameplay. From there it's user interface and sound.

Yeah, there's still a lot to do, but this project is so compact compared to my main one that I might just have a chance of finishing. At this point I remain optimistic. More details to come -- as soon as I finish my shopping.

A casual digression

2007-11-29T21:45:00.000-05:00

Gamasutra just published an article about the prevalence (and success) of "cloning" in casual games. (Independent Gaming tipped me off to the article.) Now, I've never been a casual games kind of guy; I have always been more interested in big-budget titles that deliver complex stories and gameplay. Nevertheless, my interest in casual games has grown slowly over the last couple years as the market has grown and as I've come closer to admitting that my best chance of completing a game is to make a "casual" one.

Casual games tend to focus on one central gameplay mechanic, rely on fewer art assets, and have much simpler stories (actually, most have no story at all). The advantages for a small team are obvious. I understand that any hope of creating a complete game that people will play depends on whether I undertake reasonable projects.

So, I have decided to turn my attention for a brief period (a couple of months) toward creating a casual game more modest in scope than my epic RPG. The concept for the game is light-hearted and nonviolent. It will be a target shooting game. I'm not ready yet to reveal the idea, but rest assured that you will all be able to play it.

Those of you who know me will know that this shift is not one I take lightly. I've been working on my RPG for years and, despite excruciatingly slow progress, I am still dedicated to it. But the fact is that it's better to develop a small, complete game than a small fragment of a large one. With a finished product under my belt, I'll be much better equipped to make progress toward the larger goal. A finished game also gives me the opportunity to explore my options for marketing, distributing, and potentially selling a game.

More details about the game will be coming soon. The blog will continue. After all, I'm in this for the journey more than the destination.

Beowulf and video games, part 2

2007-11-27T21:49:00.000-05:00

The other day I posted some thoughts inspired by the Beowulf movie's decidedly video game-esque animation and action scenes. Today I turn my attention to Beowulf's story. Now, I know what you're thinking: Beowulf's story is only similar to most video game stories because it sucks. By certain standards, it's definitely not that interesting. Just a few major plot points. Not many twists and turns. Pretty clear roles for the major characters.

A brief interpretation of Beowulf
On the other hand, I think the movie can be "read" not so much as an epic action movie but as an allegory or cautionary tale. I have to credit Roger Ebert at least partially for leading me to this interpretation. His somewhat disjointed review suggests an element of irony and satire in the film. I didn't really find either of those, but he did get me looking for a deeper layer of meaning.

Without giving any big spoilers, I think Beowulf is a story about the price of arrogance, greed, and lust. Ok, this isn't a big stretch -- our hero arrives at Hrothgar's hall boasting of his accomplishments, in search of riches, and not at all hesitant to ogle Hrothgar's wife in that ridiculous way macho protagonists always seem to do (as if to say, "You will be mine, oh yes, you will be mine").

The film's major symbolism, though, can be found in its antagonists. Grendel's mother, in her golden nude-glory, represents the seductive promise of wealth and power. Grendel himself represents the isolation and violent sensitivity born from a society built on greed (he made me think of the Columbine and Virginia Tech shooters). Beowulf's final foe is a physical manifestation of Beowulf's mistakes, a brutal (and large) reminder that leaders' mistakes beget very destructive forces.

Allegory and games
Ok, now the point. For all the discussion about stories in games (particularly the argument about whether they can ever be good), I find myself thinking that allegory could be a particularly rich device to use in game stories (no doubt it has been used before). There are a couple reasons why allegory seems to have a lot of potential for games.

First, allegory is well suited for the kinds of stories and worlds that are often found in games. Science fiction and fantasy worlds in particular often deal in larger-than-life situations ripe for symbolism.
Second, and more importantly, allegory can function even in an open-ended narrative situation. Symbolism can be established through visuals (like color or costumes) and sounds (musical themes) without requiring a particular order of events. Additionally, as Beowulf demonstrates, allegorical tales often work best when stories are simple, since there isn't as much plot to distract from the underlying meaning.

Should every video game be an allegory? Of course not. But as the debate over game narrative continues, allegory, as a time-honored form, seems like a good option for developers interested in telling stories of some depth without the pressure of coming up with a brand new narrative mechanic for games.

Is my game going to be an allegory? You'll have to wait and see.

Beowulf and video games, part 1

2007-11-25T19:22:00.000-05:00

I saw Beowulf today. Though they took more than a few liberties with the story, it's a pretty good movie (to be fair, the "story" in the original epic poem is quite loose, so it probably needed some tinkering). Being a computer-generated, animated film, there are almost no limits to the scope of the visual effects, and there are certainly no limits to the stunts that the characters can perform.

Several things struck me about the movie as it relates to video games. The next few posts will explore the relationship between epic stories like Beowulf (and their movies) and video games.

Game action inspiring movies
First, while watching the climactic battle scene, I couldn't help but remember some of the boss encounters in the God of War games. With a physically idealized hero (thankfully wearing clothes for this fight) flinging himself around and methodically chipping away at a much larger foe, I could almost see a big button on the screen telling me to press X as fast as possible. I had the same sense when I watched 300, which clearly had some game-inspired action.

There have been film-inspired games for years, and many of them have endured criticism for seeming shallow and rushed to market. Of course, there have been game-inspired films and TV shows for at least a decade well (anyone remember the Super Mario Bros. TV show?). Momentum has been picking up in the last five years or so, with film adaptations of video games popping up regularly (the Resident Evil series, Doom, Silent Hill, Hitman).

The prevalence of movies based on games isn't at all surprising. What's remarkable is the extent to which a video game sensibility seems to be working its way into Hollywood action movies. Indeed, where else would you find inspiration for visualizing an ancient epic poem than our present-day escapist equivalent?

Maybe what I'm noticing is just an attempt by the movie studios to appeal to a younger audience. Maybe the people making movies now happen to be life-long gamers. Or maybe there's a growing expectation that movies provide the same kind of over-the-top, super-intense action sequences as games, where the player is in control. With no control to offer the viewer, do filmmakers feel pressure to choreograph game-like action sequences to avoid losing their audience?

Of course, it's also possible that the complexity of action sequences in films and games only reflects rapid improvements in computer graphics technology. These could be the images we've always wanted to create, but until now we couldn't realize them so well.

What do you think? Are films beginning to draw on some kind of video game aesthetic, or are games and films both just taking advantage of technological change to deliver more intense sensory experiences?

Screenshots and tryptophan dreams

2007-11-21T21:31:00.000-05:00

Don't have much to say today. It seems that my mind has checked out in advance of the Thanksgiving binge.

As a special holiday treat, I thought I would post some screenshots of my progress. You'll see lots of unfinished things in here (like untextured buildings), but I continue to be impressed by how easy it is to create a nice atmosphere using Unity's new terrain tools.

The big city

2007-11-19T22:00:00.000-05:00

First of all, I apologize for the brief lapse in new posts. Work was hectic last week and involved a trip to New York. It was my first time in New York, and I wasn't quite prepared for the scale of things or the sense of awe that a city so big commands. Upon leaving, I was struck by the urge to play SimCity, probably because the trip ended with a flight over the city on a clear night.

Where does the urge to build a city come from? Not sure, but I think it has something to do with the way cities seem to behave like organisms -- constant while constantly changing. It's not a new metaphor, but it is a brilliant dynamic to try to capture in a game.

Reflections like this leave me wondering about the relationship between story-based and open-ended games. SimCity doesn't have a pre-ordained story. Indeed, Will Wright (the creator of SimCity) and others would tell you that the narrative value of open-ended games like SimCity is in the communication of events after the fact, rather than in gameplay itself. Even more, he would likely say that the best games are ones that possess the most narrative potential without dealing with a specific narrative (in other words, games that encourage storytelling among players).

The Grand Theft Auto series, though, is a nice example of games that accommodate sandbox play along with a directed (though branching) storyline. Some might call the story optional, but really it's not. The size of your sandbox in GTA depends directly on completing at least some of the story.

Since I'm working on a story-based game, I feel compelled to address somehow the possibility of open-ended play in my game world. How I'll do that remains to be seen. A lot of games resort to side quests, the search for hidden items and hidden bosses, etc. These are good options, but they are once-and-done activities. At a certain point, you can accomplish everything. Maybe that's desirable, though. Stories always have a beginning and an end, so to some extent they can't coexist with purely open-ended gameplay. Maybe the best answer is something like GTA or Will Wright's upcoming game Spore, which I've heard him describe as goal-oriented gameplay designed to prepare you for the ultimate sandbox experience.

I can envision adaptive story-based games where the player's decisions truly affect the world and the characters, but they are still some years away (D&D-based games like Knights of the Old Republic don't quite cut it, in my opinion). In the meantime, I'll continue mulling the issue while I build a virtual city to rival Manhattan.

My game design story (so far)

2007-11-14T20:58:00.000-05:00

Here's another quality article about game design from Gamasutra (by Gillard Lopes and Rafael Kuhnen). It presents a layered model of game design (starting with concept at the top and gameplay "verbs" at the bottom) and then weighs the pros and cons of bottom-up vs. top-down design. The point, essentially, is that both are required.

Some of you may be recoiling at the thought that I'm gearing up for another overly academic discussion of game structure. Luckily, I'm not that cruel. Instead, I offer something more personal.

My own experience with game design has so far fit quite well into Gillard and Kuhnen's description of a top-down process. I've been mulling the concept of my game for several years (the seeds of it probably sprouted six or seven years ago, but real development started almost five years ago when my brother came up with an idea for a character (yes, development has been, shall we say, sporadic).

With a general context in place for the characters, setting, and story line, we began chipping away at the core questions of gameplay: how would combat work, how would the player interact with NPCs, how would the character leveling process work. The answers to many of these questions have changed several times.

Once the major content-related decisions were made, I started building the mechanics, particularly the battle mechanics. This means, in effect, that I had to figure out how to program all the features we wanted in the game.

The line between design and execution is a blurry one for a small team, but we're now at a point where some minimum amount of playable content is required to test our decisions. If they don't result in a fun experience, we will have iterate at the appropriate design level to improve things. That could mean anything from revamping the battle system to rethinking the entire concept.

So, stay tuned for a chance to provide your feedback. It will be a while yet, but game design for a small fry like me is as much about the journey as the destination.

Game narrative: an overview

2007-11-12T21:43:00.000-05:00

A lot of people out there consider Final Fantasy VI (released in the U.S. as Final Fantasy III) to be the best Final Fantasy ever and one of the best console RPGs. While I haven't played the game for at least a decade, I count myself among the adoring masses.

One of the things I enjoyed so much about Final Fantasy VI was the story. There were lots of characters with full story lines (and some without), the story went on forever and had a truly epic scope, which I always love, and it had a villain that everyone loved to hate.

Rather than bore you with a litany of things I like about this game, I will direct you to Blogging Final Fantasy, which is written by worthier nerds than I.

The point, though, is that compelling game narrative is a thing rarely achieved. The reason has been debated for some years now, and there are too many viewpoints to cover in a single post. The crux of the issue lies somewhere around the issue of agency. Agency is the sense of power or control that a player feels within the game world.

Most games attempt to tell stories using cut scenes, which by definition remove agency temporarily to convey some narrative material. This convention leads to the logical idea that gameplay and story are somehow opposed and cannot coexist. A story, after all (according to most definitions), exists in the telling of events, rather than the living of events, which is presumably what agency allows us to do within games--to live a series of events, however mundane. A game without agency is no game at all.

So is game narrative just a film narrative broken up by periods of gameplay? I don't think so. There must be some deeper possibilities, but they may require adjusting our definition of narrative. Take Myst, for example. The "game" consists of puzzles, but these puzzles uncover a narrative, told through the two brothers, Sirrus and Achenar. Still, this narrative is not the story of the player's experience -- the player arrives after most of the brothers' narrative has concluded.

Ah, but there's the thing: in Myst, the player's experience completes the story. The two brothers are locked in limbo until the player arrives to decide their fate (and his/her own). An unbroken sense of agency becomes necessary for the narrative, not opposed to it. What's more, in another brilliant move, the makers of Myst made agency the ultimate goal of the game. The only reward for "correctly" completing the game is the continued ability to explore. An incorrect decision traps the player in a prison book and removes agency--the player can no longer move or interact with the world.

Narrative in games, then, perhaps lies somewhere between traditional storytelling and straight-up, means-ends gameplay. And maybe the quality of game narrative should be measured by how successfully compelling events can unfold without removing the sense of agency.

Defending epic towers

2007-11-08T21:24:00.000-05:00

Despite Unity's power as a game engine, not too many finished games have been created with it. Could have something to do with the "you have to have a Mac to develop games in Unity" thing. A new, very casual one was just released on shockwave.com: Epic Tower Defense. (Are we defending epic towers, or using towers to mount an epic defense? Hard to tell.)

The game doesn't really show off Unity's graphical chops, but it does have some nice user interface elements and a variety of different game modes. I found it while looking for something to write about and promptly spent half an hour playing. I think I might have blinked once or twice. Sometimes I wonder if I should shelve my epic story-based game and just create a casual one with "epic" in the title.

Anyway, aside from the easy bake oven ad that I had to watch before playing, it was pretty fun. Seriously, how many 8-year-old girls are going to play a game that involves zapping armies of orcs with lightning bolts?

Glorious free textures

2007-11-07T21:42:00.000-05:00

The bulk of my time this week has been spent texturing one of my models. It's not a very complex model (in fact, it's just a bunch of cylinders and cubes), but I'm trying to get everything perfect. The process has left me a bit numb in the brain. Nevertheless, I keep reminding myself that I am relatively new to the texturing process, and this is pretty much what I expected.

The tedium of this particular texture (which is clawing its way from the pits of mediocrity) compels me to comment on the special place in my heart that is now reserved for anyone who posts a library of free textures to the internet. I stumbled on Mayang's Free Textures today, which has quite a variety of images, though there is a 20-per-day limit on downloads (if that's the only restriction, I'll take it). I expect to be downloading several in the coming days as I start creating new textures for the ground in my forest. It doesn't seem quite right that the floor of a dense pine forest would be covered in lush, green grass.

So, today I would like to harness the power of the internet and suggest that both my readers write a letter to someone (doesn't matter who) requesting that Mayang be immortalized with knighthood, sainthood, statues, songs, honorary degrees and other suitable accolades for contributing his photographs to the greater good. Thank you.

Game grammar and the structure of creativity

2007-11-05T18:17:00.000-05:00

After a short delay since my last post, I thought I would launch into something super heavy: the structure of creativity. Now, before you flick your cursor toward the back button, let me give a little context.

The context
A couple attempts have emerged recently to define a grammar for games, a structured way of describing or diagramming game design that can help us understand what makes successful games work and (we hope) improve the overall quality of our gaming experiences.

One is from Daniel Cook, who wrote an article in July on the Chemistry of Game Design. Cook's system focuses on "skill chains" as a way to understand the structure and distinct elements of a game.
The second grammar model is from Raph Koster, who is helming the Metaplace project. Koster's version of game grammar, touched on in roundabout fashion in this Gamasutra interview, attempts to be more detailed than Cook's as a way to describe the elements of gameplay. I'm guessing Koster's game grammar ideas are a huge part of his design for easy-to-create games in Metaplace.

Yeah, games have structure. So what?
These two articles point toward an idea I've been noodling for a while: maybe grammar should be considered in a broader way.

Game design is, to me, a unique art form. (To be safe, let's go with a little "a" in "art" for the moment, as in anything artificial or man-made.) Its uniqueness doesn't come from any single trait; rather, games represent the combination of more creative enterprises than any other form of entertainment. Drawing, painting, animation, music, writing, story telling, interaction design, even programming, all converge in modern games.

Each element of game design, and game design itself, has its own structure. Text is divided into paragraphs and sentences. Music contains movements, verses, chord progressions, and phrases. Visual art deals with texture, colors and composition.

So, regardless of the output, all creative processes will have certain things in common:

A set of tools for creative expression (paint brushes, instruments, paper, software)
An appeal to the senses (any art form is ultimately about stimulating some combination of the human senses)
A top-down hierarchy of meaningful units (for a novel it might go like this: book > chapter > paragraph > sentence > word > syllable)
A bottom-up set of rules for combining smaller units into larger ones

Obviously each one of these elements could be explored in great detail, but together they form a sort of grammatical structure for creativity (a superstructure even?) that could be applied to any number of disciplines. For any "multi-disciplinary" creative endeavor, success depends on reconciling the grammars of multiple art forms into one coherent whole.

Grammar, creativity, and games
Is all this blathering too general to be useful? Possibly. Big-budget games and movies are usually created by decentralized teams of hyper-specialized artisans. But Art with a capital "A" these days rarely comes from the corporate machine. For games to grow as Fine Art, small groups of people speaking dramatically different creative languages will have to focus their attention on creating a product that embraces this broad structure of creativity to deliver something meaningful.

Modeling a tree (the easy way)

2007-10-30T20:42:00.000-04:00

Like so many things in life, I have discovered after days of work that there is an easier way to do something. That's right, my irritatingly complex description of how to model a tree has been rendered obsolete in 48 short hours. Ok, it was obsolete when I started -- I just didn't do my homework before I set to modeling.

What's the easier method, you ask? It's called Arbaro. It's an open source tree generation program based on a paper by Jason Weber and Joseph Penn outlining an algorithm for computer-generated trees. It's platform-independent. It's free.

Here are some images of trees created with the same algorithm.

I downloaded Arbaro and played around with it for about 30 minutes. Parts of it that are less than intuitive, but some helpful diagrams and more-or-less hidden documentation provide a little guidance. Regardless, this is the kind of program that invites exploration, so I don't mind some healthy trial and error.

Besides generating 3D meshes for trees, it also creates automatic UV maps, which are required for texturing. The UV maps aren't perfect, but they're a good starting point.

Lest you think this is turning into a blog solely about trees, I would like to declare an end to this brief series on vegetation. Next up: rocks and stones. Just kidding. Maybe.

The happiest marriage is one filled with rock

2007-10-29T21:04:00.000-04:00

Picked up a copy of Guitar Hero 3 tonight. Haven't played it yet, but it's only a matter of moments until I crack open that bountiful trove of rock.

This latest installment includes a co-op career mode that is quite exciting. You see, after years of eye rolling and summary dismissal of video games as a waste of time, my wife finally agreed to play Guitar Hero 2 with me (she even bought a guitar controller for herself), and she was puzzled to discover how much she liked it.

So, it's with much anticipation that I prepare for a rare period of gaming bliss when the guilt vibes are replaced by those heavenly words, "Let's just play one more song." It will only last a few weeks, so I plan to enjoy it.

Modeling a tree, and (r)ambling through the woods

2007-10-28T22:03:00.000-04:00

After some fairly tedious work on my pine tree, I have something that doesn't look half bad.

Unity's restrictions for in-game trees require that each tree include a single mesh (for my non-gamer readers, a mesh is just a 3D object composed of triangles) using two textures: one for the bark and one for the foliage. Unfortunately, I didn't know how to place two textures on a single mesh in Cheetah (my 3D modeling program). It is possible, and pretty easy to set up, but it took some time to figure it out.

Create the foliage
Armed with the requisite knowledge of Cheetah's features, I set out in earnest to fill in my tree. The process I settled on ended up being fractal-ish in a way, which seems a fitting way to create a tree:

First, I created a small group of six polygons that would act as a small branch and a group of pine needles.
Then I duplicated this small branch 10 or 12 times along the bottom-most big branch on the tree. I scaled and rotated each copy so the foliage would feel random.
Rather than repeat this process for each of the 20 or so branches, I just did it for the first three. This gave me three distinct sets of small branches (anybody confused yet?).
Then I used those three branch sets to fill out the rest of the large branches, copying each set several times and moving/scaling it into position.

Remove (some of) the foliage
Another one of Unity's guidelines for trees is to keep each one below 2,000 polygons. Alas, after my foliage frenzy, I was about 1K over the limit. Time to optimize. My first inclination was to remove some of the small branches that didn't add much to the density of the foliage and wouldn't be very visible from a distance. This activity, sad as it was to remove the pretty pine needles, didn't get me far enough. How could I remove more polygons without thinning out my lush tree?

Finally it occurred to me that the branches near the top of my tree would never be seen up close. What's more, the branch sets up there had been shrunk down to the point that the polygons wouldn't be visible even if you were up close.

The solution, while probably obvious to you (if you've made it this far), seems poetic somehow. At the very top of the tree, the sets of branches aren't much bigger than a single branch at the bottom of the tree, so I just removed four of the branch sets at the top and replaced them with single branches. The difference is nearly indistinguishable, and I eliminated several hundred polygons. Final polygon count: 1,970. Yeah, I'm kind of awesome.

First the trees, then the forest

2007-10-25T23:10:00.000-04:00

I started working yesterday on my first serious tree. I've tried modeling trees before and found them to be quite tricky. Something about the thousands of tiny branches makes them a pain.

Nevertheless, nice trees are yet another a requirement for convincing game worlds, and the first area of my game is going to feature several lovely copses. Unity has some nice tools for creating the forest (there's literally a "make forest" button), but before you can have a forest, you need some trees.

After some brief research I went with a pine tree. One of those tall ones shaped like a cone. For one thing, it will fit well with the atmosphere of the game world. For another, it's shaped like a cone. How hard could it be?

The modeling process went something like this:

I started with a cone and manipulated it around until it looked like a decent pine tree trunk.
Then I created some smaller cones to use as branches and distributed them along the length of the trunk, making them smaller as I got higher on the tree.
Then I was ready to texture the trunk and primary branches. I found a nice, free pine bark texture here and loaded it into the GIMP, the open source graphics editing program. One "make seamless" filter, some rubber stamping, and about 20 minutes later, I had a passable, tiling bark texture. Very exciting.

Unfortunately, this is where it got hard. Foliage, it turns out, is even more detailed a thing than branches. Following Unity's advice for creating trees, I tried to create a simple group of polygons that could serve as small branches and needles. The idea is to duplicate these polygons, tilt them, and scale them until they fill out the entire tree.

As you can see from the picture, I barely got started. First I had to find a suitable texture (the one I found could still use work). Then I had to figure out how to work with alpha channels in GIMP and transfer them to Unity, which is a little tricky (I'm still not sure I could do it again).

Despite the complications, I feel that progress is being made. If I'm happy with the result, maybe I'll post a more detailed tutorial about modeling a cone-shaped pine tree.

Sound effects for the rest of us

2007-10-23T23:32:00.000-04:00

I was trolling around a Mac game development forum today and discovered a post linking to a remarkable site called SoundSnap that showcases free sounds. I only clicked around for a few minutes, but the number of quality clips is truly remarkable.

My game has a long way to go before sound effects become a necessity, but sound has been a nagging issue for me, since it is a highly specialized part of game development, and I lack the equipment, money, time, and talent to record sound effects myself. This one site should give me a big nudge in the right direction.

Considering how many sounds are there now, I'm excited to see how many there will be when I'm really ready to dive in. Just think, now I'll be able to create that group of happy sea lions I always wanted.

Stone wall textures, a mountain adventure

2007-10-21T20:52:00.000-04:00

I went to the North Carolina mountains this weekend with some friends and hit the obligatory Asheville-area attractions: Chimney Rock and the Biltmore House.

Despite suffering much ridicule from my wife, I managed to take a series of texture photos for the game. It's not often that I stand next to massive walls, so I couldn't pass up the opportunity.

Some work will be required to turn these photos into useful, tileable textures. The GIMP has a "make seamless" filter, but I haven't tried it yet. In the event that it doesn't work very well, I will resort to the time-honored tradition of using online tutorials.

The world isn't flat, it's square, part 2

2007-10-18T21:15:00.000-04:00

Well, I'm stumped. After what seems like days of pondering, I can't think of a way to create the illusion of a massive world using one square terrain. Sure, the terrain might look fantastic when you're near the middle of it; the problem arises when you approach the edge. What looks like a vast mountain range head-on just looks silly from the side.

I've considered several options, and none of them really satisfies me:

Use a truly huge terrain. This option is quite attractive, but I pause because, while there seems to be no upper limit to the size of terrains Unity will let you try to create, there is certainly a limit to how large a terrain most computers will handle without choking (I've hung Unity more than once by trying to create too large a terrain). It is therefore a requirement to divide things up into sections.
Hide the edges of the terrain. One obvious way to do this is with water. Indeed, islands are probably the ideal use of square terrains. But I'm not creating a group of islands Myst style, I'm creating continents. Another option is the inverse of islands: valleys. If each area of the world is surrounded by impassable cliffs, the player will never see the edges. That might work, but what if you discover some lofty perch that lets you see for miles? You would see the edge of the world, and beyond that, nothing. It would be very disconcerting.
Build a backdrop. Hiding the edges might work, but a world full of squarish islands and valleys isn't very appealing to me. Besides, how can you let the player travel between areas without letting them approach some sort of boundary? Another option, then, is to acknowledge the edge of the map and just use a flat image that looks like it carries on into a new area. The illusion might be convincing enough for the player to go with it. Final Fantasy XII uses a technique like this to divide many of its zones. Unfortunately, I'm not confident in my ability to paint a backdrop that gives the necessary sense of depth.
Something in between. Or I could use some mixture of the first two options. I could hide the edges by building a terrain that is considerably larger than what I need for an area but not so big that it would slow things down. Then I could focus the action of that area near the middle of the terrain, and the functional boundary between zones could exist some distance away from the terrain's actual edge. This could certainly work, but it seems like an inefficient use of the computer's memory and, frankly, like a waste of space.

That's a lot of words to say that I don't know what to do. If anyone has ideas, please let me know.

Part of the trouble, of course, is that I'm trying to force a tool to do something it wasn't really built to do. Probably I should take a step back and come up with a creative solution that will work within the boundaries I've got, instead of trying to explore the edges all the time.

Terrains are fun; UV mapping is not

2007-10-17T07:50:00.000-04:00

Just a quick update this morning. Last night I spent my time on two things: UV mapping and terrain painting.

For those of you who don't know, UV mapping is the process of "unwrapping" all the polygons in a 3D object onto a flat image so it can be painted with a texture. This process has gotten much easier in the last few years, thanks to some more sophisticated algorithms having been built into most of the 3D programs. Nevertheless, it is still very time consuming (and tedious).

After getting tired of trying to map UVs for one of my buildings, I decided to spend a little time creating a terrain. I have a fairly good idea how the terrain should be laid out for the opening area of the game world, so I started creating the rough, square shape of it. After about 10 seconds, I realized that making a terrain is considerably more entertaining than UV mapping. I then proceeded to spend so much time on it that I wasn't able to write a blog post.

The world isn't flat, it's square

2007-10-14T22:04:00.000-04:00

I spent most of the afternoon today testing the limits of Unity's new terrain system. Partly I'm learning how to use it, but mostly I'm trying to decide how to set up my game world.

Most terrain systems (Unity's included) work best with square terrains created from a heightmap (essentially a grayscale image whose pixels determine how high each point on the terrain mesh should be). The trouble with square terrains is, as you might guess, that the world is not square. You cannot fall off the edge. Unity terrains seem fairly flexible in that they don't have to be exactly square, and they can be adjusted to be quite large. Any really large terrain, however, would come with serious performance hits, since all its heightmap information would have to be stored in memory at the same time.

Because of this problem, most world-based games have chosen to divide things into sections and make the player look at realism-killing load screens when moving from one zone to the next. The notable exception is World of Warcraft, for which the good folks at Blizzard developed some way of streaming terrain information to minimize the number of load screens (this is one of WoW's most important innovations, in my opinion, because it allows a more enduring sense of immersion, and air travel).

So what are my options for piecing together a coherent world? Load screens are a necessity, I'm afraid, since Unity can currently handle only one active terrain at a time. Nevertheless, I would like to divide my world into squares that actually fit together. I may end up scrapping the idea, but I'm hoping that by planning ahead, I will be able to devise a way of making the game world feel coherent with some tricky, on-the-fly switching of higher- and lower-detail terrains. We'll see.

In the meantime, I have to work in squares. I take heart, though, that this is a time-honored gaming tradition. Think of the original Final Fantasy, where sailing your ship westward past the Earth Cave will spit you out on the eastern edge of the map near Crescent Lake. Sailing north will transport you to the world's southern reaches, where you will continue sailing north. It feels perfectly natural at first, until you realize that in a real, round world like ours, one cannot sail north forever.

Unity 2.0 has arrived -- check it out!

2007-10-10T21:18:00.000-04:00

Unity 2.0 was released today. I downloaded the trial version and should be getting my licensed copy soon. This means I will have the ability to create terrains and brilliantly elegant GUIs. The terrain engine is really powerful -- not only can you sculpt and paint the terrain, you can paint objects onto the terrain. Trees, grass, rocks...anything really. Trees and vegetation even sway in the wind.

Here's a screenshot of a scene I created in just a few minutes. You can see the GUI I was testing in the upper left corner.

Everyone should go download the new version of the Unity Web player and then check out the demos here. They really are amazing.

A tricky concept

2007-10-09T22:23:00.000-04:00

I'm sure all of you who regularly read my posts (thanks) are probably wondering when you'll actually get to see something other than a little blue man and a crate. In fact, how can you be sure that I'm really developing a game at all? I haven't mentioned its name, given any insight into characters or plot, or even shown any concept art. My blog's appearance is pretty bare; it's just a stock Blogger template. I haven't mentioned a web site. The list goes on.

So when can you expect me to deliver something real? I'm working as hard as I can (damn that day job) to create something reasonably professional for you. I don't want to embarrass myself, after all. The truth is I'm learning as I go, and that means a good deal of trial and error.

Beyond the tortoise-like pace of development, my real hesitation is a desire to promote this video game in a meaningful way. The blog is obviously a part of that strategy -- an experimental way to build an audience (tell your friends) and a game at the same time.

Now, one approach to the blog would be simply to post every asset I create one at a time. This would lead to a wonderfully long list of posts showing off disconnected, even random pictures of boxes, trees, buildings, people, animals. It would also leave no surprises for the game itself. If you've already seen all the locations and read about all the characters' inner-most secrets, why would you play? (If you are interested in random pictures, you will transfixed by this endless slide show.)

So I have to control myself. I will want to post pictures of everything, but, no, the trick is to write interesting (and I hope enjoyable) posts while establishing a controlled leak of information that will help build a grass-roots interest in this game I claim to be creating. I mean, how could it not work?

Real-time battles, part 3: party AI

2007-10-07T23:12:00.000-04:00

My last post about real-time battle systems looked at requirements for enemy AI. This third (and final) installment will deal with party AI.

To me one of the most significant differences between a turn- or time-based battle system and a real-time system is how the other members of your party behave. Old-fashioned time-based systems like Final Fantasy VII usually have random battles that take place in a temporary battle area. The advantage here is that the player can easily give orders to every member of the party during the battle, since only one party member or enemy can execute a move at any given time.

In a real-time system, things happen too fast to give explicit orders to each party member throughout an entire encounter. One obvious solution to this problem is not to have a party. But if you don't take the easy way out, you have to prevent the rest of the party from being a liability.

The common approach to party AI is, first, to give the player a way to switch control between active party members at any time during a battle and, second, to provide a short list of general behaviors for AI-controlled party members. These often give you three choices along the lines of aggressive, defensive, and support (healing and ranged attacks).

Unfortunately, these limited options usually result in party members that seem to get themselves killed (but only after using up all your items), and there is no way to customize their behavior any further.

Final Fantasy XII's gambit system finally offered a better and more fun option for party AI. By giving the player access to the if-then structure (e.g., if an ally's health drops below 50%, cast cure on that ally) of the party AI system (and by making it a part of the character leveling scheme), party AI became not only useful, but fun. Creating just the right combination of gambits became almost a game in itself.

One criticism of FFXII's gambit system, of course, is that the more gambit combinations are available, the less you have to pay attention during battles. You can literally run up to a group of enemies and go get a snack while your party defeats them. In some ways this is quite nice, but could be quite annoying for players who like finer control. Turning gambits off is always an option, though.

I haven't yet designed the party AI system for my game, and I don't know how I'll approach it. Some amount of control over party members' decisions is essential, but a more robust system would need to be carefully integrated into the gameplay and could distract from the primary character leveling system (which is going to be very cool, but I don't want to give it away just yet).

But until it's time to program party AI, I will turn my attention back to modeling buildings and other inanimate objects.

The joy of texturing

2007-10-04T20:27:00.000-04:00

As I mentioned in my last post, creating art assets is likely to be the most time consuming aspect of this project. Visuals are, however, quite important, as a fellow blogger points out. While I'm just starting the process of modeling objects, I would like to take a moment to discuss texturing. The reason is simple. Yesterday I turned the crate I had so expertly modeled into a living, textured game object, and I am pleased.

This is premature, of course, since we have yet to come up with a texturing method (more on that in a moment) or even a color scheme for the first area of our game world. Nevertheless, in an effort to see what might be involved in creating a vibrant wooden object, I set out to texture my crate.

Now, there are really two main approaches to texturing:

Painting -- this is what the real artists do. Start with a base color in your favorite graphics program and gradually paint in details like highlights, shadows, texture (like wood grain or knots). If you're curious, check out this tutorial on painting, yes, a crate. Painting can yield fantastic results because the possibilities for stylized textures are endless. Case in point, World of Warcraft.
Photo-based texturing -- It would be unfair to say this method is any less artistic than painting, but the desired effect is different. Photo texturing aims, as you might guess, at realism. Using this method, you would start with a photograph of your desired texture (a piece of wood or, better yet, the side of a crate) and manipulate it until it fits your desired style. My favorite example here is the Myst series.

Which method did I use? Well, neither. My 3D modeling program has a very nice procedural wood shader (which means it creates a texture from a program instead of an image file). So, instead of finding a crate to photograph or trying my off-hand at painting from scratch, I created a flat plane in Cheetah, added a wood shader, customized it by fiddling with some numbers, rendered it, and then used that rendered image as the starting point for my texture.

The result is certainly not going to change the world, but I was amazed how a couple hours of work could turn a drab gray cube into a crate just realistic enough not to be noticed -- and for a crate in a video game, there is no greater accomplishment.

The trouble with modeling

2007-10-02T19:49:00.000-04:00

Having made faster-than-I-ever-dreamed progress on gameplay programming, the time has come to turn the bulk of my attention to modeling (that's 3D modeling--my career with Calvin Klein never really took off).

For the sake of completeness, here's a quick list of all the basic gameplay that's currently working:

Basic movement
Camera controls (complete with collision detection!)
Battle mechanics (attacking, casting spells, applying status effects)
Character, enemy, and weapon stats (attacks actually cause damage)
Enemy death
Basic enemy movement and AI (lots more work to be done here)

My brother, who has more experience with 3D modeling than me, will be handling the bulk of the character modeling and animation, while I will probably focus on inanimate objects (for example, this crate I modeled yesterday). The reason for this switch is simple: while there is plenty more programming to do, a story-based RPG like ours isn't worth much without a world in which the story can take place. It will also help me hold your interest, dear reader, if I can balance my dry ramblings with a few pretty pictures.

Speaking of dry ramblings, I feel compelled to point out that the creation of art assets will likely prove to be the hardest part of this project. Not only must every object in the world be designed and modeled, it must be textured, animated (if necessary), and placed. We're going to attempt a master spreadsheet containing the status of every object in our little world, and I'm genuinely frightened to see how big it will get.

This is the part of game development that separates the big studios from the little guys. Success in modeling depends as much on the number of people as the depth of talent. Our approach will be to take it one building, rock, or tree at a time until we have a world for you to play in.

Two unrelated notes

My favorite band has cast a surprise announcement on the recording industry: they are selling their latest album on their own web site, with no record deal, and, this is big, for as much as or as little you care to pay. Seriously.
Secondly, I have one song left to clear on hard in Guitar Hero II--yes, Free Bird. I must beat it before GHIII comes out. I have no choice.

The stuff of innovation

2007-09-30T20:02:00.000-04:00

Independent Gaming posted a link yesterday to a panel discussion about innovation in games. The panel took place during the Independent Games Summit at this year's Game Developer's Conference (GDC), which happened back in March.

There was a distinct counter-cultural feel to the discussion, even to the point that all the panelists expressed a distaste for the pursuit of innovation (which of course happened to be the subject of the panel). Ok, that last sentence wasn't entirely fair -- I think the panelists' complaint was against innovation as an end in itself. Innovation for innovation's sake leads to gimmickry, so the feeling went, and gimmicks never lead to compelling or enduring art.

Yes, the "A" word. It didn't surprise me that artistic expression was a major subject of discussion. Two of the panelists in particular felt that games should be viewed through the same hyper-individualistic lens as writing, (indy) film making, painting or any other form of individual/small group expression. To these people, games are about the game designer, not the player.

This position ignores the vital question of entertainment. Any public expression (artistic or otherwise) is meaningless without an audience. Readers, viewers, and players contribute to the meaning of an expression by the act of participating and interpreting. Without participation, expression is moot. Participation in games by definition requires the potential for entertainment. For me the appeal of video games as art lies in the fact that the audience can now play an active role. Artists no longer need to dish out meaning and/or entertainment; they can facilitate it.

Unfortunately, high art in games is still just an academic dream. Even recent attempts at forcing players to make difficult moral decisions (see Bioshock) seem superficial at best. Maybe the issue is some incompatibility between gameplay and story. Maybe it's just the youth of video games as a medium. Either way, when you really get down to it, the exploration of these ideas is the reason I'm creating a game. It's not so much a way to express myself as a way to communicate with someone else about something both fun and meaningful.

The pursuit of brevity

2007-09-27T18:12:00.000-04:00

It occurs to me that some of my posts have been way too long.

Real-time battles, part 2: enemy AI

2007-09-26T21:18:00.000-04:00

My first post about real-time battles dealt with timing -- how to pace a battle so it's fast-paced but leaves just enough time to make decisions. Part 2 deals with a considerably more complicated topic: enemy artificial intelligence (AI).

Before I begin, a disclaimer. I don't know anything about AI -- at least not about programming it (yet). These thoughts are just that: reflections on what's required to simulate an intelligent adversary. The way I see it, the problem of enemy AI can be divided into two parts (at least in terms of RPG games like the one I'm making):

Basic movement
In a real-time battle system, enemies exist in a world filled with obstacles -- rocks, trees, buildings, other creepy monsters -- so enemies need the ability to move around the world without doing silly things like trying to walk through a wall or wandering into the ocean.

Basic movement, then, requires that enemies have the ability to move around in a normal fashion (when nothing is in the way), and to avoid obstacles when they arise. Normal movement, of course, can take several forms. One enemy might patrol between a series of fixed points while another might wander aimlessly in a particular area.

Neither of these possibilities is very convincing, however. It would make much more sense for enemies to move about the world with a purpose. Not only would they lead happier and more fulfilling lives, they would seem more realistic. An evil imperial soldier might indeed patrol between fixed points, but a giant cave bat wouldn't spend all its time wandering within five meters of the place it was born.

Higher brain function (deciding what to do)
Wandering is fine, but what if a player (or group of players) invades the cave bat's cave? It would protect its turf by attacking the intruders. The first order of business is to decide who to attack. This decision is easy enough when there is one player-controlled character, but in a party-based or multiplayer game it obviously becomes more difficult.

Many games solve this issue with the concept of aggro. An enemy might attack the first player it sees, but if another player comes in and deals twice as much damage, he will draw the enemy's attention. Aggro, then, can be thought of as a function of damage or healing. Whichever player in range has offended the enemy the most becomes the object of its raging cave bat wrath.

Once the enemy has decided who to attack, it must then choose the manner of attacking. The conventional way to approach this problem is to build a decision tree. Given its set of possible moves, the enemy will survey its situation and choose a move, often with a healthy dose of randomness built in. For example, a monster with access to a healing spell and a basic attack might go through this sort of thought process:

If my health is less than 60%, heal myself.
Otherwise, attack the player with the most aggro.

The options in the decision tree get priority based on their order. As you might imagine, these trees can get pretty complicated. It's not the most sophisticated way for enemies to make decisions (they can't learn), but it is the most straightforward.

A similar approach is also useful for party AI, which I'll discuss in part 3. I know you can't wait.

My camera, vanquished

2007-09-24T21:32:00.000-04:00

After three days of wrangling with my code and muttering to myself, I have managed to get my camera system to a place where it mostly behaves. Having accomplished this, I feel a new sense of admiration for games with cameras that gracefully avoid passing through floors and walls. It's still possible to make it pop through a wall occasionally or to find just the right spot where it will completely freak out, but it'll do for now.

Here's the gist of how it works:

Just before every frame is drawn on screen, the camera casts a series of rays to detect objects around it. The primary ray starts at the camera's target (the player) and casts back toward the camera, ending a short distance behind the camera. A group of secondary rays are also cast pointing outward from the camera itself, like spines sticking out in several directions.
In normal circumstances (when no offending objects are near the camera), the camera can be moved around by clicking and dragging the left mouse button.
If an object interrupts the primary ray (i.e., passes between the camera and its target), the camera jumps to a point in front of the object. Once the object is clear, the camera slides back to its preferred distance from the player.
If the camera detects an object below it (like the ground), it will begin sliding toward its target. In this mode, the camera's distance to the target is proportional to its own distance from the ground.
If an object gets too close on the left or right side of the camera, the camera will slide along this object toward the target until it slides clear and can move along unobstructed.

So why was I having so much trouble? My camera didn't have enough feelers sticking out of it. My initial setup only cast rays backward, left, right, and down. With so few, it was easy to make the camera think it should be moving forward and backward at the same time. Once I added a few more feelers--essentially increasing the resolution of my collision detection--the camera started behaving more like I planned.

Then the muttering diminished, and I cracked open a beer.

The virtual web, and how to avoid hitting the ground

2007-09-20T21:31:00.000-04:00

The other day I stumbled on an intriguing new project called Metaplace that's aiming to provide an easy-to-use, web-standards-based way to create virtual worlds. The possibilities for creating games are obvious, but this seems an interesting step for the Internet in general.

If Metaplace works like they say it will, it would be possible to turn your web site into a virtual world--meaning that your site wouldn't just deliver content, it would provide a place where people could gather and discuss that content. Imagine being able to chat in real time with anyone else who's currently visiting a site. It could be an incredibly powerful way to make connections. This is a big step beyond our current social networking setup, where people just leave messages amounting to little more than, "I wuz here."

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On a game-related note, I spent most of my time today working on camera collisions. There's nothing worse than a game with bad camera controls. I'm trying to build a camera that's smart enough to keep the player always in sight. This means recognizing when it can't see the player and moving to a place where it can.

I've gotten to the point where my camera can handle direct obstacles well enough. Things get tricky when it needs to avoid objects like the ground. It doesn't make much sense to look at the player-character through the ground, so the camera needs to recognize when its getting too close to the ground (or something like a wall) and move to a safe spot along the vector between the camera and the player. This involves a lot of math for an English major, so I'll just have to take it slow.

Real-time battles, part 1: timing

2007-09-19T21:13:00.000-04:00

Ok, so my last post wasn't exactly about real-time battle systems like I said it would be. This one is.

As I mentioned previously, there are advantages to a real-time battle system (like World of Warcraft or most other MMOs). For one, you don't need to whisk the player off to a "battle mode" that exists in some parallel universe. Another big advantage is that battles can be more realistic. Enemies and party members can attack and be attacked at any time, and there doesn't need to be any god-of-the-battle AI that dictates when each character or enemy is allowed to execute a move.

As you might expect, these advantages come with their share of tricky design decisions. This is the first in a series of posts that will discuss some of the common ones. Where to start?

Timing

Attack speed -- At first glance, timing seems easy. Each character or enemy has an attack speed, probably determined by some stat or the awesomeness of your weapon.

Cooldown -- Ok, that might be enough if all you do is flail about, but what if you want to give your player a special "extended flail" skill? You wouldn't want him to be able to string these together endlessly (it just wouldn't be fair), so you need a cooldown time for each ability or skill.

Charge time -- So now you can't eliminate your target with an endless string of "extened flail," but couldn't you just string together every skill in your arsenal and gank your unsuspecting target that way? (Indeed, this is the method used by every god-forsaken rogue in World of Warcraft.) This wouldn't be too challenging, either (yes, I played a mage), so you also need to implement some system where abilities require time to execute. Then you need to decide whether the charging process can be slowed or interrupted.

Down time -- This is similar to cooldown, but instead of affecting a single ability, down time affects your ability to do anything at all. After executing your supremely powerful "nuclear meltdown" ability, there might be a period of time when you can't execute any new moves, which leaves you vulnerable to the giant cockroach monster that survived the meltdown. Final Fantasy XII used down time instead of cooldown; WoW imposes a uniform down time of about a second after each move, in addition to skill-specific cooldown.

Easy enough, right? Part 2 will cover the intricacies of enemy AI.

Man on fire

2007-09-17T21:52:00.000-04:00

My brother has been working for a while on a better model for us to use while testing animations. Upon importing this model into Unity, my brother insisted that I make it catch fire. Five minutes later, this is what we had. Any demonic overtones are purely coincidental.

<div align="left" style="width:400px;padding:5px;border:2px solid #808080; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica;">The browser does not have Unity Web Player installed.<a href="http://otee.dk/getunityplayer.html">Get Unity Web Player</a></div>

Building a world

2007-09-16T23:26:00.000-04:00

I've given plenty of props to Unity so far, but even a great engine is only as good as the content you feed it. To create content for a game, you obviously need tools for 3D modeling, animation, texturing, and music/sound editing. Thankfully, there are quite a few options out there even for people operating with a limited budget.

For 3D, I had been leaning toward Blender, since it's free and includes an impressive list of features. It also has a big time learning curve and an unconventional interface.

I recently picked up a copy of Cheetah3D, however, which is very reasonably priced and offers nearly every feature I need: first-class modeling tools, skeletal animation, UV mapping, 3D texture painting, and, in the most recent beta, light mapping. The user interface is a snap to learn as well, and objects created in Cheetah can be imported seamlessly into Unity.

I'm getting to the point now where I will need to begin churning out content and building the game world. Efficiency is paramount for a small shop, so tools like Unity and Cheetah can make a daunting task much more manageable.

My next post will talk about some design decisions required to set up a real-time battle system.